Here's something cool...

If any of you saw the New Year's Eve Times Square celebration this year, you might have seen Sting perform "Brand New Day" on stage with a young chromatic harmonica player named Shane Sager. If you didn't see it, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alu-XPPytXg

Probably even cooler, though, is a session that Shane had with Sting back in 2016 in Sting's home music room. Shane was asked by his band leader if he could perform for Sting. Sting wanted to know if Shane (a diatonic player performing in the Boston area) could play chromatic for him. Shane said he had three months to learn the chromatic harp from scratch to prepare for this meeting. You can watch the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlSULz9mkzs

You can see that Shane is obviously hesitant and a little intimidated (who wouldn't be) at the start of the session, but Sting coaxes him along and by the end, Shane is playing pretty confidently with the legend. Sting later asked Shane to work more with him on the road. For "Brand New Day", Shane replaced none other than the chromatic master himself -- Stevie Wonder! What a cool path!

Enjoy!