Gabriel and the orchestra (stocked roughly half-and-half with touring British musicians and locals picked up at every stop) are touring as a result of the 2010 album "Scratch My Back," which featured the works of other songwriters and composers, and the first set included songs from that disc, such as the opener, David Bowie's "Heroes," reinvented with a celestial wheeze of brass and stuttering strings, as well as Arcade Fire's "My Body Is a Cage," starting with piano, percussion and a lone woodwind leading into a crashing pulse, and the sinister strings of Regina Spektor's "Apres Moi."

The set also featured the night's major misstep, a lugubrious version of Paul Simon's "The Boy In the Bubble." Gabriel introduced the song by saying all the African bounce of the original had been "drained away"; why he thought that was a good idea is anyone's guess.

There were more Gabriel songs in the first set than in most of the previous shows on the tour, with highlights including the heavy accents and scary brass whoops of "Darkness," and of course "Biko," anthemic in any incarnation. Gabriel ended the first set with it, dedicating it to the Arab Spring and, after getting the closing chant going, turned the microphone to the audience and left, saying, "what happens now is up to you."

The orchestra, and Gabriel, caught fire during the second set though, opening with precise, fast unisons on "San Jacinto" and getting (relatively) funky on "Digging In the Dirt" with heavy beats and a vertigo-inducing, percussionless middle part. "Signal to Noise" and "Rhythm of the Heat" each flowered into an extended instrumental ending that allowed the orchestra to build in complexity, with the massed ornamentations becoming frenetic yet remaining easily distinguishable.

Early on, Gabriel's voice occasionally took a verse or so to get going on a song, but by the end of the night he seemed to get stronger, with particular highlights including the keening on "Mercy Street," the screaming on "Rhythm of the Heat" and the falsetto parts on the grandly romantic "Blood of Eden." Always a theatrical performer, he easily inhabited the creepiness of "Intruder" and the righteousness of "Wallflower" and literally skipped through a buoyant "Solsbury Hill."

The show was a visual treat as well, with video projections ranging from the narrative realism of "Mercy Street" and "Father and Son" (with Gabriel and his 99-year-old father, doctored to look like vintage film) to the abstractions of "Downside Up" to the surveillance-camera style of "Intruder."

In short, it was a night of reinventions by a brilliant arranger (John Metcalfe) and a fearless artist. Anyone trying to puzzle out how a 61-year-old artist can stay relevant need look no further.

Ane Brun, one of Gabriel's backing singers (along with his own daughter Melanie), provided a two-song opening set of her own material. Her strong voice bringing muscle to "10 Seconds" and "Do You Remember" included her turning her guitar backwards and using it as a drum.

© Projo Arts, by Rick Massimo