Sting at Gent Jazz: he came, he didn't come, he came anyway and still triumphed...

Three years ago, he didn't come, on his doctor's advice. Two years ago, he wasn't allowed to come, on the advice of almost every doctor. A year ago: the same old story. So Sting kept Gent Jazz waiting for him for almost four years. But today, there was no room for error: no Roxanne holding the red light, no house search by The Police, no double-booked moonwalk. Just Sting and Gent, Gent and Sting.

So, Sting, who, on paper, seemed like a good fit for Gent Jazz. He was already playing in swing bands when Stewart Copeland asked him to join The Police, and when that band broke up, he brought in one or more jazz greats for each of his solo albums, from almost permanent lieutenant Branford Marsalis to Manu Katché, who played "Englishman in New York" with a bang. "Englishman in New York" was the second song in Gent, but without the swing passage. The band, with loyal right-hand man Dominic Miller on one guitar and his son Russ on the other, gave the crowd what they wanted: one hit after another, played solidly and with verve. Before "Englishman," Sting opened with "Message in a Bottle," followed by "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic": if he were a cyclist, he'd get a dressing down in the team bus for squandering his energy before the first climb. After that, he delivered his solo debut, "If You Love Somebody Set Them Free." Seriously, stuff a penny under Sting's tight orange shirt—a remarkably tight shirt for a seventy-year-old, by the way—and a hundred-pound note will inevitably come out of his mouth. What a man, what a band. A bit routinely executed, perhaps, not quite blasé, but you don't say that when Lukaku nets his twentieth of the season. Two songs from Sting's new album, "The Bridge," still unreleased when he was supposed to play Gent Jazz three years ago, breathed life into the set. "If It's Love," in particular, with a whistled intro by the master himself, is one I want to hear again.

"Wrapped Around Your Finger" was wrapped in a wafer-thin layer of dub, and in "Walking On The Moon," Sting confessed where he got his inspiration as a young reggae fan by singing a bit of Bob Marley. At other times, too, the pop star winked at his past and that of others. For "Brand New Day," Sting subtly informed his young harmonica player that the original mouth-sliding was Stevie Wonder's and whether he could handle the pressure. During ‘Shape of My Heart’ a backing vocalist suddenly took over the lyrics of rapper Juice WRLD, who once sampled the song in question.

Another joke, at the start of the encore: Sting asked the audience what they wanted to hear, even though "Roxanne" hadn't even been played yet. The lady of pleasure even had to wait a bit longer to turn off her red light, because The Police classic grew into a prolonged singalong in Ghent. It washed over the frantic version of "Every Breath You Take"—I personally find that song cleaner when it's slowed down. For "King of Pain," an average singer took the stage, introduced rather dryly by Sting himself as "Mr. Joe Sumner." His son, in other words, who, moreover, was only there because... well, why?

It's nice to end with a non-clichéd version amidst all those world hits: we were sent home with the porous "Fragile," for which Sting even swapped his bass for an acoustic guitar. It was supposed to be something to think about, but the only thought I have is: fragile? How can you even be so strong and sing so well at seventy? As a performer, you can only blame him for the fact that his one thousand one hundred and fifteenth performance of "Fields of Gold" wasn't as thrilling as the first one must have been, but you really have little to complain about with an hour and a half of this glossy-paper-wrapped craftsmanship.

(c) Humo by Jasper van Loy