Sting: All This Time : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Sting was in Tuscany when he gave this concert in a courtyard there, beginning at nine in the evening, Italian time, September 11th. The show was scheduled as a two-hour Webcast; however, Sting chose to transmit only one song - his hymnlike classic "Fragile" - after he and his multinational crew learned of the events in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. The rest of this vividly played, authoritatively sung show was committed to tape, and it pulses inescapably with the aura of its real-time date. The music thrives from "Fragile" on, through a sly, funky "Hounds of Winter" and a "When We Dance" that delivers soulful freedom within a classical structure. This is music filled with mood and memory, refined yet raw with emotion.

JAMES HUNTER
(RS 883/884- December 6, 2001)