Recommendations of the Editorial team
A man walks through the dark streets of Amsterdam to the Rijksmuseum and quotes a famous song by Jacques Brel about the city’s harbor. It’s Gordon Sumner, who the world knows as Sting. In the museum, which houses masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer and Judith Leyster, he performs with guitarist Dominic Miller.
A small stage is set up under Rembrandt’s monumental painting “Night Watch”. Sting comes in the blue shipyard worker’s outfit and sturdy boots that he wears in the musical “The Last Ship”. The audience sat down on chairs.
Sting, playing acoustic guitar, navigates “Message In A Bottle,” “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” “Roxanne,” “Fields Of Gold,” “Fragile” and “Every Breath You Take” with Dominic Miller. They perform some of the songs in the museum’s library without an audience. Sting talks in a voiceover about his grandmother in Wallsend, who gave him “Treasure Island” to read. He interprets “The Night Watch”, told by the painter Judith Leyster, whose paintings were attributed to Frans Hals, and reports on the meticulousness of Johannes Vermeer, the “Sphinx of Delft”. And he remembers a 1977 tour with “a band” during which he wrote “Roxanne.”
Sting sings the songs as wonderfully as he once sang medieval madrigals to the lute. Dominic Miller, with whom Sting has worked since 1990, plays as always subtly and without frills.
If you’re looking for a museum guide, Sting knows his stuff. However, he rarely has time.
Sounds like Art: Sting at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, from March 5th arte.tv
