For over an hour during and after my dinner tonight, the evening was filled by the music of Sting. In the ARTE Concert video “Sting – Sounds Like Art – Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam” (YouTube↗︎) the singer performed acoustic guitar pieces with his guitarist and longtime collaborator, Dominic Miller, in the front hall of the Rijksmuseum among masterpiece paintings by Rembrandt, Judith Leyster, and Vermeer. In between song parts they showed him browsing while he narrated about his history, his songwriting, and the works of art in and the rooms of the museum.
Three songs of the concert were from my favorite album of his from 1991, The Soul Cages. For one of those songs, “Mad About You”, Dominic Miller played a guitar by the family Voboam from 1699 which is on permanent loan to the museum. Sting played on two modern-day custom instruments by Atkin Guitars↗︎, both with beautifully painted florals on darkly stained wood, one as a daffodils and robin composition (that caught my eye in the thumbnail leading me to watch this video), seen here behind Champi sleeping on the dvd player:
This concert which seemed to run much longer than an hour has brought to my attention the “Sounds Like Art” series – I know what I’ll be binge watching starting tomorrow…
