In 10 years Sting has gone from bearded Jazz bass player in Newcastle, to blond Jazz singer in Barbados. Oh yes, and lead one of the world's biggest Rock bands too.

The crowd at Manhattan's the Ritz strained against the edge of the stage as Sting stepped forward to introduce the next song, a new number entitled Moon Over Bourbon Street.

"This is about an accidental vampire caught between good and evil," he announced, the spotlights casting an eerie glow on his face. Then, with a smirk, he added, "A bit like someone we know, isn't it?"

Those confused by the reference were made to understand moments later, when Sting caressed his own cheek as he sang, "The face of a sinner, the heart of a priest... trapped in this life like an innocent lamb."

He does possess a sinner's face, with piercing blue eyes that glare wickedly on command. And what else is a Rock & Roll star but a vampire, whose rapaciousness frequently drains the lifeblood of those around him? But "trapped"? That's rarely been true for 33-year-old Gordon Sumner ever since he left Newcastle for a career as the songwriting, lead-singing bassist of the multiplatinum Police.

One other line from Bourbon Street that can't be applied autobiographically is the metaphorical lamb, for Sting is more like a predator, stalking his goals regardless. Which explains why flanking him that night at the Ritz were neither Police guitarist Andy Summers nor Police drummer Stewart Copeland, but four of the most acclaimed black stars of contemporary Jazz: saxophonist Branford Marsalis, keyboardist Kenny Kirkland, bassist Darryl Jones and drummer Omar Hakim. The show was one of three warmup dates before the group flew down to Eddy Grant's Blue Wave Studios in Barbados to record Sting's first solo album, tentatively titled The Dream of the Blue Turtle.

Sting has frequently declared that Rock & Roll is dead, but his decision to conspire with Jazz musicians doesn't signify a categorical rejection of Rock. Rather, it eloquently makes manifest the full meaning of his statement — that Rock musicians have become increasingly staid and provincial, unwilling to challenge themselves by working in or drawing from other idioms. Sting isn't attempting to bury the corpse, he's trying to revive it.

The significance of the project would in itself transcend the music were it not for the fact that The Dream of the Blue Turtle happens to be excellent: rich and prismatic. It is not, all parties involved stress, a Jazz album, but few Rock musicians are well-versed enough musically to devise Darryl Jones's exclamations on bass for instance, or Omar Hakim's cymbal explosions.

And few Rock-based players these days are able to excel at on-stage improvisation, which plays a large part in this group. In Rock & Roll you find a moment and rehearse and rehearse so that you can repeat it every night; the idea here, as in Jazz, is to depend on spontaneity to hit a different moment each performance. For someone like Jones, who works regularly with Miles Davis, such improvisation is second nature. Jones was one of many Jazz musicians to attend the auditions, or "workshops," as Sting calls them, held in New York at the beginning of the year.

Sting's original concept for the LP was even more iconoclastic. Whereas the motive behind most solo albums is to not have to sublimate one's ideas, he originally gave his home demos to the group Torch Song to produce.

"He said to call him when it was time to do the vocals," explains the trio's Grant Gilbert. Though Sting later decided not to work with the synthesizer-weighted Torch Song, his eventual choice for a producer was the unproven Pete Smith, who assisted him on the demos Sting had recorded at London's Utopia Studios. That he picked Smith over such other illustrious candidates as Quincy Jones, Gil Evans and Martin Rushent is... unorthodox.

But Gordon Sumner delights in confounding people's expectations. To that end, he claims, he's contrived an alter ego, Sting: prone to arrogance and frequently contrary statements. On the day of our encounter, the blond-haired bassist (who's moved to guitar for this group) seemed to be more parts Gordon Sumner than Sting: The blue eyes were friendly rather than intimidating, and in place of his fabled arrogance was a good-natured, self-effacing sense of humour. Wearing a denim jacket over nondescript shirt and pants, his face deeply tanned, Sting was glib on all subjects except for the future of the Police — though, interestingly, he did tend to refer to the trio, now in its eighth year together, in the past tense.

With a six-month tour to commence in Japan on August 6 (the band augmented by singers Janice Pendavis and Dollette McDonald, who appear on the album), however, the Police are certainly on hold through to the end of the year. Clearly, Sting's full attention is being directed to this new group — and it is, all the members underscore, a group, whose chemistry was apparent, says Jones, "even at the audition." He, Hakim, Kirkland and Marsalis are excited not only about this bridging of musical styles but also by the prospect of receiving the opportunity to display their talents for the Rock audience.

"What we've created," explains Hakim, "is a musical hybrid that will be able to be understood by a larger audience that normally wouldn't put on a Miles Davis album or a Weather Report album. I think it's going to be very good for the industry to see that while everything else will eventually go out of style, artistry, musicianship and creativity will always remain."

And, speculates Branford Marsalis, The Dream of the Blue Turtle will also prove beneficial to Sting. "People are really going to have to give him his due now, as a musician, not just as the guy with the blond hair, blue eyes and heavy Aryan features that the teenagers love.

"Sting," Marsalis says respectfully, "he's... heavy.

It's rare for Rock Musicians to work with players from outside the realm of Rock & Roll. When you talk about Rock being dead, isn't it that very insular attitude you're referring to, rather than the form itself?

"It's more than that, yes. It's that kind of stagnating, incestuous thing. Pop music at its best is a great mongrel, taking in sources from everywhere. I think Pop music was at its best in the '60s, when there were no barriers, no demarcation lines of Jazz, Classical, whatever. So I wanted to inject some of that dialectic into this project, and I managed to get the best young Jazz musicians in the country. They all wanted to do it, which I think is a great tribute to me, because they don't particularly like Rock music. But also, I didn't want to make a Jazz album.

"I wanted to stretch myself, I wanted to be challenged by what they could do, and I also wanted them to stretch too. I don't think they found it particularly easy, and I was very demanding about what I wanted. I didn't want them to just slip into their Jazz mould and go off and do what they can do falling off a log."

Besides transcending musical boundaries, this album and tour are bound to break down barriers based on racial stereotypes; the idea that white musicians play Rock & Roll and black musicians play Jazz or R&B, but not Rock. It's interesting that it's been mostly Englishmen such as yourself, David Bowie and John Waite who've recorded or toured with black musicians.

"The reason English Rock & Rollers even exist is because of black music. The music of my adolescence was Soul music, then Jazz. I don't want to be racist about it, but black musicians are closer to what you can call essence, if you like. And also, black people are going through an interesting process, historically, where they're becoming less and less insular; they're much more out in the big world, and it's reflected in this case in how easily these musicians shifted from being Jazz players to playing music that's, hopefully, without a label."

You've said in the past that in Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland you have the best musicians to interpret your material. What did Omar, Kenny, Branford and Darryl bring to the music on this record that maybe Andy and Stewart would not have, and vice versa?

"This album is not a vehicle for comparison to the Police. It'd be foolish to me to even attempt making comparisons.

"I'm not really interested in the spirit of Rock & Roll. I don't know what Rock & Roll is, or if it's valid anymore"

All right, then, how did their approach differ from that of musicians who are exclusively Rock & Roll? What about Omar, for example, who plays really complex rhythms with Weather Report — how does he approach a straight 4/4 beat?

"In a very, very disciplined way. He can virtually play on every beat if he wants to. But he's aware of the discipline involved in making Rock records, which is more than one would at first assume. In Jazz, you're allowed carte blanche to just play off each other. I wanted to maintain that spark and free flow of ideas, but at the same time, what I wanted was very rigid. And I think we've pulled it off. I'm very pleased with the record. It's live, it's obviously played by musicians and not by machines — in fact, it's rough as hell — and yet it satisfies a lot of ingredients that needed to be satisfied in order for it to be a commercial record. And I wanted it to be as commercial as possible."

Isn't another goal for this project to stress musicianship, which is a value that's been sorely lacking in a lot of recent Rock & Roll?

"Musicianship and subject matter were the two main areas I was very keen to go for. Most records nowadays are made by machines, and the issues that Pop songs are about are negligible. So I wanted to weld that musicianship with real issues."

You introduced Darryl on stage as the reason for your being on guitar. You're not exactly a slouch on bass; what made you choose him?

"Darryl is one of those bass players who started to play the bass. I was a guitarist first, then a double bassist, then, at about 19, an electric-bass player. Darryl has a very pure approach to bass playing. However, there are some things, I'm happy to say (laughs), I did on the album; I played the Reggae/Calypso song, Love Is the Seventh Way. I played on Fortress Around Your Heart, only because I was writing it in the studio, and basically I just put down the bass straight away, and it seemed fine, so I kept it on. And I also played double bass on Moon Over Bourbon Street.

"So I did play some of the bass, but the motherlode of the work was done by Darryl, largely because he's just a wonderful player and can do things I can't. And I'm not precious about my ability as a musician. I think that my function is this group is as a concept organiser. I'm working with musicians who are technically much, much better than I am."

In talking to Branford, we detected a bit of condescension toward Rock & Roll, which isn't uncommon for Jazz players.

"You'd get the same from me, though. I'm very condescending about Rock & Roll."

But while Jazz oriented players may be able to execute Rock intellectually and physically, can't they sometimes miss the spirit of Rock & Roll because they don't believe in the spirit of Rock & Roll?

"I'm not really interested in the spirit of Rock & Roll. I don't know what Rock & Roll is, or if it's valid anymore. I'm interested in the spirit of live music, and I don't think Branford, Omar, Kenny, Darryl or myself miss the spirit of Rock & Roll at all. I think we're right in there, and I would challenge hereby any band to blow us offstage!" (Laughs.)

As a singer, how was it for you working with a sax? At the Ritz, on Roxanne, you and Branford were trading lines back and forth like a vocal duet.

"Well, in the Police I was more or less the only person working in that frequency range, which was a freedom, I suppose, but it's nice to have a tasteful player weaving in and out with you. It's a relief. I can sit back, and Branford can take over, and vice-versa."

In the Police, you write mostly for guitar, bass, drums and some keyboards. Here you had these additional voices to work with. Did you compose with those textures in mind?

"Most of my seductive, pleasant, blander songs have a kick in the teeth in them somewhere, if you look. But it's a good kick in the teeth. A positive kick in the teeth! Character building!"

"I composed a lot of the songs on keyboard anyway, so those basic parts were already written. I didn't write any sax parts as such; I trusted Branford to come up with my vision of it. Like, for The Children's Crusade, I said, I want something that's kind of military, and he played something that was totally, utterly appropriate. He wouldn't be improvising just with the changes and the chords, he'd be improvising with the lyrics, and you can hear it in the sensitivity of his playing."

Synchronicity marked a return to a sparser ensemble sound. We were surprised that at the Ritz the band had such a big, dense sound, because you generally seem to prefer a lot of space in your music.

"You have to understand, the band was formed seven days before the first Ritz gig. It was impossible for it to be tight, to use the old phrase. I wanted the musicians to know the songs and to play their arses off, basically. There was some attempt at tightening things up, making space here and there, but there wasn't time to do as much as I would have liked. I suspect that when people see the band in the fall, the material will be more lucid. But I certainly don't want to chain these guys up. I don't want to have them locked into solid arrangements."

Well, while you're not playing Jazz per se, you are borrowing from its foundation of loose structures and improvisation.

"That's really how the Police operated too. A song would start very structured, then we'd have a middle section where anything could happen, and then we'd go back to the structure. That's more or less the same idea with this group."

It's appropriate that you have Darryl from Miles Davis's band in the group. Wasn't Bitches Brew a pretty important album for you?

"Oh, yeah. For me, it was almost as important as hearing the Beatles for the first time. It was a bit like taking acid — not that I've never taken acid — but I can imagine it's as cathartic as that. Also, In a Silent Way. Most of Miles's work has been influential to me. I learned about space from listening to Miles Davis.

Now that you've switched from four strings to six strings, how do you rate yourself as a guitarist?

(Laughs) "I'm a really good rhythm player. I have no illusions about taking 20-minute lead breaks. I don't like lead guitar terribly much; I think it's all been said, and I don't think I'm the one to revitalise it. I'm a good chord man, and if I can hold my own with these musicians, I can't be that bad!"

We know that in the studio you like to go direct when you're recording your bass, so that you can play in the control room and not have to wear headphones. Did you do the same thing for your guitar parts?

"The same. I can't bear headphones; I have to hear the whole thing. Also, that way, when I'm playing, I can stand over the engineer's shoulder and kick him. I can direct things better from the control room."

Let's talk about your songwriting. Synchronicity wasn't exactly an uplifting record; it contained a lot of despondent material, and that feel seems to have carried over to this album.

"I'm not sure about it being despondent; I think... there's a certain depth to what I'm talking about, and you can't be flippant about it. But I don't think the songs are without hope or are totally negative."

"It seems like having children has affected your songwriting. Songs like The Children's Crusade and I Hope The Russians Love Their Children Too definitely sound like they were written by a father concerned for his children's future.

"They are, yes. My belief is that politics and politicians have made themselves redundant. If there's to be any hope for world peace, it's in the hands of you and I, as parents. I've led a very rich and fulfilling life, and I could die tomorrow and not feel as if I'd been cheated. I'd really like for my children to have the opportunity to live in a peaceful, sane world, and it's really up to me to create that world. It's not up to Ronald Reagan or Gorbachev or Mrs Thatcher, because they're already proved themselves to be laughably inadequate in that respect.

Wasn't the Police's 1980 Asian tour pretty instrumental in opening up your songwriting contents-wise? That was really reflected on Zenyatta Mondatta.

"I think that was a piece of journalese that sort of got into the mythology of the band, that we'd been around the world, so therefore we started to write about world issues."

"Fortunately for me, I've managed to create this alter ego called Sting, who took all the glory and all the flak, and I hope — I hope — left this thing inside intact."

But just being moved by the spirit of the people in the face of this tremendous poverty...

"That may be true. I don't think I was in a box before that; I was fairly committed to a geo-political view of the world before that."

Every Breath You Take was generally perceived as a blithe, cheery little love song, when in fact it was pretty insidious. It sounds like you've written another with Set Them Free, with its line 'If you love somebody, set them free.'

"In many ways it's an antidote to Every Breath You Take. That song is about surveillance and ownership, possession, jealousy; emotions that we all have. Set Them Free is the opposite, saying that if you love somebody, let them alone. There is a nasty side to it too. It's got quite a swagger to it, and a kick in the teeth. But most of my seductive, pleasant, blander songs have a kick in the teeth in them somewhere, if you look. But it's a good kick in the teeth. A positive kick in the teeth! Character building!"

Did you compose most of the album on the Synclavier?

"A lot of the stuff. Russians was composed on the Synclavier.

Do you use the SCRIPT program, mainly?

"I use the whole thing. Sometimes I use SCRIPT, sometimes I use the sequencer."

But you do know how to write out music.

"Oh, yeah. But the SCRIPT is great for getting parts. Anything you play — if you do a glissando with your elbow — it'll be written out. So occasionally I'd give Kenny Kirkland a written sheet of music."

What sort of drum machine do you use for composing?

"I use the LinnDrum, largely for ease. You can get drum sounds on the Synclavier, but it's much quicker just to have the preprogrammed settings on a Linn, and the whole thing works in tandem."

Besides freeing you from having to write out the music yourself, does the Synclavier free your creativity as a songwriter?

"I'm fairly facile on a guitar and can play just about anything I want, but on a keyboard I'm fairly slow, and I find the Synclavier's sequencer easy to construct chords on. Say I want to construct an F-flat minor seventh, followed by an A-flat five. It'll take me that long to get my finger in the right places. With a sequencer I can play those two chords one right after the other and then run them together. So that gives me facility there for writing."

Do you prefer digital or analogue synths?

"I prefer analogue for making records. The sound of tape hiss is very attractive to me. I think digital is much better to write and edit on; you can transpose at the touch of a button, you can reverse, you can take one section and put it somewhere else without the cutting of tape; as a writing tool, I think it's wonderful. But ultimately I'd like to do an album with digital, purely on the Synclavier, to see what would happen."

You generally seem to favour a warm sound. How would you characterise the Synclavier.

"I think it's the most sophisticated, dynamic-sounding synthesizer. I think compared to the Fairlight, it's more adult sounding. But I don't think that the Synclavier is a Rock & Roll machine. What it did was give me access to an orchestral sound, which I never had before."

What everybody wants to know for last; you said several years ago that the Police probably would have said everything they were going to say in five albums. Synchronicity was LP number five. Also, you've said that as soon as the group ceased to be useful for your career, you'd drop it.

"Did I say that? Hmm... Are you asking is the band finished? Well, the band isn't useful to me this year. Maybe next year. Maybe the year after that. We're not bound together by sentimental ties or financial ones. I'm not going to make any definite statement, yes or no (laughs). Right now I'm not interested in the Police, I'm interested in my new band and album.

"I think it's my best work, the most refined piece of work I've done. And I'm proud that it's not going to be easily formula rised. It's not going to fit terribly well on radio formats, for example. But I'll be intrigued as to how they treat it.

"The whole idea is to keep people confused, because that allows you freedom. As soon as they're sure about who you are and what you're gonna come up with next, then you're dead, stagnant and useless — which is why Rock & Roll is dead; I know what MTV is going to look like today.

"I don't want to be in that kind of prison. I like for people to go, "What the fuck is that boy gonna do next?"