Stewart Copeland performs with the Nashville Symphony at Schermerhorn Symphony Center; photo by Philamonjaro Studio

Classic-era rock performed with symphony orchestra is hardly a new thing. It’s been around for decades now, nodding to the ever-creeping reality of older pop and rock music’s status as a cultural fixture; the proletarian “classical” music of its time, if you will. The concept is usually applied to popular music containing elements naturally complementary to an orchestral palette—the work of comparatively sophisticated bands such as The Moody Blues or Kansas, or perhaps the ornate mini-pop-symphonies conceived by Brian Wilson for The Beach Boys.

The Nashville Symphony’s stock-in-trade is, of course, the true classics, but it seems that the pops crossover principle helps keep the crowds flowing through the doors of Nashville’s magnificent Schermerhorn Symphony Center, especially now that it is gloriously back in business, having weathered the lockdown lull experienced by so many venues. While mask-wearing is respected and high-quality masks are free for patrons upon request, COVID restrictions and requirements were lifted after the CDC’s new protocol was released on March 11. This past week found the Symphony presumably breathing easier and spending three nights in performance with Stewart Copeland, founding member and masterful drummer of ’80s musical institution The Police.

It’s one thing for an orchestra to shadow the sedate majesty of, say, “Nights in White Satin,” or even to echo the still-vibrant colors of “Good Vibrations,” but it’s another thing altogether to tackle reworkings of Police material, dubbed “Police Deranged for Orchestra” by Copeland, who arranged every note. While there’s an unfortunate tendency among listeners to assume that a rock drummer is likely the least accomplished or knowledgeable member of a band (and such clichés usually do contain some grain of truth), be it hereby known that Stewart Copeland is a world-class rhythmatist who has composed both rock opuses and operas, and has long been in demand as a composer of film scores and TV themes. (He took the podium mid-show to kinetically conduct his original theme for CBS’s The Equalizer.) As adept at working with orchestras and ballet companies as he is playing in a rock setting, Copeland is eminently qualified for the symphonic and symphonic-pops worlds alike. Given that fact, it’s a bit ironic that the genre-hopping musician brought to the Schermerhorn stage what is probably the closest thing to punk-rock anyone’s ever experienced with full orchestra in tow.

Flashback: Seeking suitable collaborators for a new band while living in London in the mid-1970s, Copeland noted the emergence of the unskillful yet invigorating punk music scene. He opted to use this aesthetic as a stepping-off point for the nascent Police, whose earliest releases wielded a pared-down and aggressive approach leavened with elements of reggae, bossa nova and other exotica well beyond the musical capabilities of the punk movement at large.

While the majority of the two-part, roughly 90-minute program favored the more stylistically adventurous fare from The Police’s five-album run (spanning 1978–1983), punk-informed hits such as “Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand Losing You” were high-octane highlights, with lead vocals provided by a tag-teaming trio of seasoned L.A. session singers. Filtering the songs of The Police through soulful female vocalists, Copeland effectively de-emphasized the indelible stamp of Police co-founder and primary songwriter Sting’s soaring tenor voice. The presentation of the better-known Police numbers as emotionally leveled-out pop repertoire items allowed these familiar tunes to be experienced on their compositional merits.

“King of Pain,” “Every Breath You Take” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” hit songs each carrying a moody intensity (if not shades of actual menace), were necessary inclusions, owing to their continued popularity. And they worked well enough, though their repetitive and somewhat note-stingy melodies, as well as the steady mid-tempo rhythms and irreducible signature riffs originally played by Police guitarist Andy Summers, left little room for them to take fresh flight (though Copeland and company offered several performances that reached loftier altitudes, at times hitting exhilarating heights). An extended, evocative orchestral prelude to “Every Breath You Take” was an exception, though, a standout segment on which the symphony musicians shone.

Sting’s ambitious yet unerring pop instincts and immense charisma may have been key to catapulting The Police to stardom’s pinnacle, but in the “Deranged” context, Copeland’s formative architecture for the five-time-Grammy-winning band—his often-intricate, tasteful rhythmic underpinning and muscular musicality—was more evident than ever, placing the trio’s original instigator as the prime candidate for chief of The Police. It’s rare for anyone on a drum throne to play such a foundational role in the sound of a band, and uncommon for a drummer to possess a fingerprint as instantly identifiable as Copeland’s.

As a result, “Police Deranged for Orchestra” was a smashing success strictly on the basis of his performance at the kit, though enhanced many-fold by the aggregation of talent onstage. Joining Copeland and the world-class Nashville Symphony were guest musicians of comparable pedigree in their respective spheres: former Paul Simon and Peter Gabriel bassist Armand Sabal-Lecco and guitarist Rusty Anderson, on loan from Paul McCartney’s mighty, longtime touring band.

While gifted with abundant chops, Copeland is anything but a showoff on the symphony stage, employing impressive dynamic control so as not to overpower the acoustic instruments around him. On numbers such as the mystical, Arabian-tinged “Spirits in the Material World” and the reggae-splashed “Message in a Bottle,” he executed taut, deliberate patterns, alternating mouse-quiet restraint with brief, propulsive eruptions—indeed, a Copeland/Police hallmark.

Midway into the buoyant “Walking on the Moon,” Copeland unleashed his soloing skills in a virtuoso face-off with bassist Sabal-Lecco that rose well above the now-predictable good-time-for-a bathroom-break-or-a-smoke drum solo and elicited rock-concert-level hoots from the crowd. Closing the evening was a triumphant sprint through the ebullient 1981 U.S. Top 5 single “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” its orchestral score a particularly effective recreation of the original recording’s rich, keyboard-laden production. A welcome respite from Sting’s darker-hued material (and a song which in fact dates back to pre-Police days), the evening’s sole, inevitable encore was also a drumming tour de force not for the faint of stick.

Whenever he wasn’t caressing or pummeling his drums, Copeland was a lively, genial presence onstage, relating with casual ease to the members of the more than half-full house. He slung a Fender Stratocaster over his shoulder midway into the concert and raved about the potent sensation of slashing out power chords with a full orchestra, took numerous opportunities to call out the symphony musicians for well-deserved applause, and delivered a dry, mock-fawning tribute to Sting (the two band members’ divisive, even violent musical disagreements are now the stuff of legend). Spooling off his superstar bandmate’s various assets, including a sincere acknowledgment of his “fabulous songs,” Copeland landed with a telling zinger: “This,” he said, sweeping his right arm to indicate the stage full of musicians gathered to perform his own Police arrangements, “is my revenge!”

Copeland’s most serious words all evening were yet another nod to the Nashville Symphony, an appeal for concert attendees to go deeper into the classics. “Now, this orchestra—who for tonight are a rock band—they’ve got a day job. And their day job is really serious music, you know. . . . That important, deep, powerful music that soars, lifts, blows your mind . . . is what these guys really do. I urge you to come back and check out some Debussy, Ravel, they have coming up—the really big, powerful stuff. Come and check it out. It will change your life.”

The Symphony’s upcoming slate of performances in April alone covers a broad swath, from a Mendelssohn violin concerto (April 8–10) and an Easter-week Messiah to a Nat King Cole centennial tribute featuring Patti Austin at month’s end and a Star Wars-themed show this weekend, April 1–3 (you can still catch it if you move at light speed) as well as the Tchaikovsky, Ravel and Sibelius combo Copeland referenced coming up in May.

If you aren’t willing to heed the recommendation of a world-renowned, multi-million-selling rock star, percussionist and composer, then maybe you’ll consider listening to the chief of The Police.

Find an extended schedule of upcoming Nashville Symphony events at nashvillesymphony.org. Indeed, they rock.

Photos by, and courtesy of, Philamonjaro Studio, except photo of singers by Daniel Knighton, courtesy of public relations for Stewart Copeland