When they first played together, Parker felt “this wave of hugely positive energy, and I was incredibly pumped and excited — it was so much fun I couldn’t concentrate.” Says Copeland, “to feel him really just getting a buzz from jumping off the stool and pounding on Stravinsky and kicking it till Tuesday — that’s infectious.”

They launched into the concert like gangbusters...the quintet fired up an evening of mashed-up music that was not only successful, but also actually quite thrilling.

Off the Score, the project that brings Copeland back to the Memphis area, where he first performed with the Police in 1979, is in some ways the perfect encapsulation of the drummer's career, a melding of classical composition with rock improvisation.

Stewart Copeland is probably best known as the hard-charging drummer for the legendary band The Police...and now he is involved in a chamber music mashup called Off the Score with one of Canada’s great pianists Jon Kimura Parker and three other musicians who have strong orchestral chops: Yoon Kwon, violin and a regular with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra; Marlon Martinez on double bass and Judd Miller, who plays an Electronic Valve Instrument.

It is obvious that Copeland and his fellow band members live for creating more adventurous music, and they accomplished this goal with the “Off the Score” performance.

Led by legendary drummer and composer Stewart Copeland and award-winning pianist Jon Kimura Parker, the band led listeners “Off the Score” with an energetic, challenging, and varied collection of music that ranged from Igor Stravinsky to Outside, from re-interpreted Police songs to newly-commissioned classical work.

Stewart Copeland: It's conceptually tension, but in fact, the sensation is more like release. For me, I get to play with players of unbelievable caliber. I thought I was playing with the best of the best of the best, as a film composer; we're hiring the triple-scale guys. But, no. I get up with Yoon Kwon and Kimura Parker, and they have a proficiency, a musicality, a skill level way beyond my experience. To play with that caliber of musicians, for me, is very liberating.

What’s the story behind Off the Score?

It was actually our agent that brought Jon “Jackie” Kimura Parker and I together. He represents both of us, and he said to each of us, ‘You’ve gotta meet this other guy.’ As Parker is playing his Stravinksy, he’s always thought that he could mess with it, but he doesn’t because he comes from a world where the mission is to recreate what Uncle Igor put on the page. Even when musical possibilities present themselves to him, he doesn’t usually deviate because in his normal environment that’s not what you do. So we said, let’s create a different environment where it’s okay to do that. Um, how about that drummer guy who is a raging inferno of cacophony and energy? And so the two of us came together and it was a meeting of minds.