Even though he has sung “Roxanne†thousands of times, Grammy winner Sting says he still looks for something new each time he performs it.
“My job every night is to see the song evolve,†he explains during a Zoom interview. “I’m not there to reproduce something that was recorded decades ago. I’m there to discover something new…and I’m still in that process of discovery. I’m still a student of music.â€
Offstage, in fact, he regularly sits with his guitar and searches for “something that excites my interest. From that tiny detail, I build a song around it.â€
Choreographer Kate Prince took Sting’s hits and used them as the basis for “Message in a Bottle,†a dance program that tells the story of a family forced to leave their homeland and embark on a journey to freedom.
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The production, at London’s Sadler’s Wells Theatre, brought Sting to tears when he first saw it. “I never anticipated this when I was writing these songs,†he says. “I’ve seen the show a couple of times in the theater and I see how the same effect it had on me works with an audience to an even greater extent. I’m a big fan.â€
Choreographer Kate Prince has taken Sting's songs and turned them into a dance presentation, "Message in a Bottle."Â
Paying homage
Prince, however, was worried she wouldn’t do the music justice. “You just do your best and try and trust your guts,†she says. “I felt a huge responsibility with every single song. ‘Every Breath You Take’ is the first song I learned to play fairly well on the piano and I’ve worked on a sort of piano arrangement of it with (arranger) Alex Lacamoire as the start of an idea of how we could fit into our story. It’s such a huge responsibility.â€
Most of all, Prince didn’t want Sting’s music to be the basis for a jukebox musical. “If someone had told me (that had been done), I’d have been disappointed because I want Sting’s vocal. That’s so distinctive and I didn’t want that to go.â€
Sting, as a result, is heard singing the show’s songs.
With that in place, she says, it was a matter of finding the new story.
A new 'Ship' sails
Like Prince, Sting never embraced jukebox musicals – “it seems a little cheesy to me sometimes. But this one does encapsulate my feeling about the world, my concerns. I’m deeply happy that it’s happened this way – it’s my songs translated into this form, which I did not expect.â€
Rather than compile his work into a story of his life, Sting used his 1991 album, “The Soul Cages,†as the basis for a Broadway musical, “The Last Ship.â€
The 2014 production brought him a Tony nomination for Best Original Score and tested his songwriting dexterity.
“You have to be prepared to cut things that you love in order to move things along,†he says. “Songs get thrown out. Whole verses get thrown out by the collaborative process and it is difficult but, at the same time, very, very rewarding. I probably had more fun writing ‘The Last Ship’ than almost anything else in my life. I would love to do that again. In the meantime, we have ‘Message in a Bottle’ and Kate’s done all the work for me.â€
"Message in a Bottle" was presented in Great Britain, complete with Sting's vocals, at Sadler's Wells Theater.
Making connections
Prince, a three-time Olivier Award nominee, started with songs that were important in her life (“Walking on the Moon†was part of her wedding). She pitched it to her bosses at Sadler’s Wells, then dabbled with the story during a workshop. “And then we presented it to Sting.â€
“They Dance Alone," she says, proved crucial. One of the lyrics was, “One day we’ll dance on their graves; one day we’ll sing our freedom†“and it was that lyric specifically that I was thinking about as a family: How do you move past the moment of mourning the loss of someone to be able to rejoice in the life they had? Our show ends with that song and it bursts into joy and celebration as the characters reach a point where they are able to move forward and be happy despite what they’ve been through. It shows resilience and hope and love, which is what’s at the heart of the story.â€
Prince says she choreographed to both Sting’s words and music. “At any given moment, one of them might take control but neither can exist without the other. Quite often, I choreograph to the rhythm of the lyric, so it’s not just on the bass or the string or the saxophone. It’s the marriage of the two together.â€
Sounds of silence
Sting, meanwhile, embraces the silence in his songs. His band, The Police, “achieved success in the ‘70s as a three-piece band and there are limitations there. But I always think art thrives in limitations. So our band’s motto was ‘less is more.’ We don’t have to fill in all the frequencies. Leaving space is something that was very important to us.
“When I’m onstage now, I’m still looking for that silence within a song. I think all we do as musicians is frame silence, which is the perfect music, if you think about it. There’s perfection in silence. We just draw a frame around it.â€
“Great Performances: Message in a Bottle†airs Nov. 3 on PBS.