Conveniently located off the intersection of two major highways (I-75 and I-285) in northwest Atlanta, the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre played host to 17-time Grammy Award-winning musician Sting, along with jazz pianist ELEW in support, on Tuesday night. Built in 2007, the Cobb Energy Centre is a premier venue for Broadway shows, ballet, concerts, educational shows, family performances, opera, corporate meetings, and events, all anchored by its 2,750-capacity, three-tiered John A. Williams Theatre. Fun fact – the CEPAC was also used to represent the Center for Disease Control in the first season of AMC’s The Walking Dead.
Following a brief welcoming introduction by Sting himself, Grammy-nominated Eric Robert Lewis, popularly known as ELEW, took his place behind the grand piano shortly after 8:00pm. Starting his night off with a cover of The Knife’s “Heartbeats,” ELEW spent the next 35 minutes captivating the early audience with his astonishing uniqueness. Known as a cross-over jazz artist that has the innate ability to fuse his immense piano skills with rock-based musicianship – self-coined as “rockjazz” – ELEW delivered enjoyable covers from bands like Breaking Benjamin and Nirvana. Handpicked by Sting, ELEW was a wonderful way to kick off the evening.
Setlist:
1.) Heartbeats (The Knife cover)
2.) The Diary of Jane (Breaking Benjamin cover)
3.) Oleo (Sonny Rollins cover)
4.) Delfeayo’s Dilemma (Wynton Marsalis cover)
5.) Puerto Rico
6.) Thanksgiving / Georgia on My Mind (Ray Charles cover)
7.) Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana cover)
With the clock slowing ticking towards 9:00pm, 73-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Sting (inducted as a member of The Police back in 2003), along with Dominic Miller (guitars) and Chris Maas (drums), took to the stage in front of an adoring capacity crowd. The trio then launched into the immediately recognizable Police hit single “Message in a Bottle” off the band’s second studio album Reggatta de Blanc (1979) to begin what would become a nearly two-hour set.
Given his lengthy and decorated musical career, both with The Police and as a solo artist, I had to assume it was difficult for Sting to pull together the right mix of setlist songs for this tour, but I found it to be a perfectly balanced evening. The first half of his performance, arguably bookended by “Message in a Bottle” and “Driven to Tears” by The Police, primarily featured his solo work, including fan favorites in “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You,” “Fields of Gold,” “Seven Days,” and “All This Time.” However, the trio did drop in The Police’s “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” hit single from 1981 early in the night as well.
While Sting offered up a lot of personal storytelling as part of his flow from tune to tune, perhaps the funniest moment of the evening was mid-set following “Driven to Tears.” Apparently Sting allows Miller to choose whichever song comes next at this point in the night, to which Miller selected a tune Tuesday he stated they hadn’t played in a while in “Fortress Around Your Heart.” Jokingly Sting responded, “Are you sure about that? What key is it? Oh, I will figure it out.” Trust me, he had no problem delivering the track.
From there, the back half of the evening’s performance moved towards a focus on The Police, with five of the final eight songs being pulled from that band’s masterful catalog. These tunes all originated back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, so if you catch this tour, don’t expect them to sound “radio perfect.” Putting aside the fact that while still lovingly distinctive, Sting’s vocals have aged slightly, and he’s also taken the musical liberty to enjoyably modernize his approach to classics like “Walking on the Moon,” “So Lonely,” “King of Pain,” and the main set finale, “Every Breath You Take.” The trio also sprinkled in two popular Sting solo tracks with “Shape of My Heart” and “Desert Rose” as part of the fast-paced song transitions into the encore pause.
The band returned to the stage for their encore after a brief break, with Sting facetiously wondering out loud what song the crowd was still waiting around for. With laughter permeating the Centre and cellphones held high in the air to capture the moment, the trio launched into the iconic, yet now somewhat artistically modified, 1978 hit Police single “Roxanne.” Then, as he took his place on a stool with an acoustic guitar, Sting mentioned he liked to finish his nights off as “quiet and thoughtful,” which lead into the slower ballad in “Fragile” off his second studio album …Nothing Like the Sun (1987) to close out the beautiful night of nostalgic music.
The Sting 3.0 Tour wraps up in the United States on Sunday, November 17th, following the completion of a five-night stint at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, California. After the holiday season and turn of the new year, the tour will pick back up on Sunday, February 14th, at the Farmasi Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Band:
Sting – Vocals, bass
Chris Maas – Drums
Dominic Miller – Guitars, backing vocals
Setlist:
1.) Message in a Bottle (The Police song)
2.) If I Ever Lose My Faith in You
3.) Englishman in New York
4.) Every Little Thing She Does is Magic (The Police song)
5.) Fields of Gold
6.) Never Coming Home
7.) Mad About You
8.) Seven Days
9.) Why Should I Cry for You?
10.) All This Time
11.) I Burn for You
12.) Driven to Tears (The Police song)
13.) Fortress Around Your Heart
14.) Can’t Stand Losing You / Reggatta de Blanc (The Police song)
15.) Shape of My Heart
16.) I Wrote Your Name (Upon My Heart)
17.) Walking on the Moon (The Police song)
18.) So Lonely (The Police song)
19.) Desert Rose
20.) King of Pain (The Police song)
21.) Every Breath You Take (The Police song)
Encore
22.) Roxanne (The Police song)
23.) Fragile
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Elliott is a music photographer covering shows in Atlanta, Georgia, and the surrounding area. The highlight of his photography career was back in the early ’90s, when he sold Neil Diamond the rights to his negatives from a show and then purchased a set of tires for his 1979 280ZX during college with the money.