POP WEEKEND : Music Machine : Sting, Band Deliver Polished Performance Lacking Improvisation

The well-oiled machine that is Sting and his current band took the stage Saturday at the Pacific Amphitheatre and proceeded to demonstrate that they are, uh, a well-oiled machine.

If you wanted superbly sung and well-executed music that traversed or blended pop, rock, jazz, reggae and funk, Sting delivered. If you wanted a nine-piece unit with vocal and instrumental chops galore, Sting delivered. If you wanted a set list representing Police songs and both albums Sting has released on his own, Sting delivered. If you wanted some of the greatest cheekbones in pop music, Sting delivered.

But you also had to accept fairly slick playing with surprisingly little sympathetic interplay among the band members, given the orientation of the music and musicians involved.

In his two post-Police excursions, “The Dream of the Blue Turtles” and “ . . . Nothing Like the Sun,” Sting has ventured into jazz explorations, teaming with such ace jazz musicians as keyboardist Kenny Kirkland and saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who were with him again Saturday night.

Yet there wasn’t even a hint of jazzlike improvising on stage. One player never prodded another into some unplanned instrumental flight of fancy--because in a Sting show, nothing is left to chance . (If you don’t think that Sting and singer Dolette McDonald engage in those “spontaneous” dance steps--or that he and some of the musicians engage in those “spontaneous” antics--exactly the same way every night, we have some “Jesse Jackson for President” buttons we’d like to sell you.)

Meanwhile, the ex-Police chief has pretty much turned his back on rock ‘n’ roll and on the inspiring, whole-is-greater-than-the sum-of-the-parts quality of a first-rate rock band playing together .

The current approach yielded music so often subdued that on the surface, it could have passed for New Age musings or even cocktail-lounge pop.

So how did Sting manage to wind up with a largely triumphant concert?

Well, beneath that surface (and beyond the aforementioned superb musicianship), it still came down to songs. And this man (born Gordon Sumner) has written a trunkload of good ones, many of which he performed in Saturday’s two-part performance.

The selections encompassed a fairly sweeping range of topics, from a wry nod to author Quentin Crisp (“Englishman in New York”) to the relatively simply romantic pledge of “We’ll Be Together,” to “They Dance Alone (Gueca Solo),” which is about the female relatives of Chilean political prisoners who dance alone in public protest.

In a move he may repeat when he performs on the upcoming Amnesty tour, Sting introduced “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free” by saying: “This song is for a man called Nelson Mandela and for all the children in South African jails--you’d be surprised how many there are.” With that, the band lit into one of the more forceful renditions of the evening.

As for Mr. Sumner himself, he played some keyboards, rendered some deft guitar playing and sounded typically sharp and expressive vocally, whether opting for his gritty croon or his tenor bark. Even with all those hotshot musicians surrounding him, there was never a moment’s doubt that Sting is always the key cog in this well-oiled machine.