Peter Gabriel moved heaven and earth for this tour

Peter Gabriel's return to Seattle will likely be bittersweet.

The veteran English rock star tried hard to make this area the American home for WOMAD, the world-music festivals presented throughout the globe by World Of Music And Dance, an organization he founded more than 20 years ago. One of his few performances since his last major tour nine years ago was at the WOMAD festival last year at Marymoor Park in Redmond.

It was the fourth and last WOMAD at Marymoor. Despite Gabriel's efforts, the festival never caught on in a big way here, even though it was a wonderful, enlightening, entertaining experience. Since it lost money each year, it had to be scrapped. It has not yet found a new home in America.

Gabriel, who said Marymoor was the best festival site he'd ever seen, made some good friends here, notably billionaire Paul Allen. He even made use of the recording studio in the smaller of Allen's two oceangoing yachts, the 198-foot Méduse. Experience Music Project, which Allen founded and funded, participated substantially in the last WOMAD here, but still the big crowds did not come. Gabriel's performance, however, drew the largest, most enthusiastic audience of all for WOMADs here.

Gabriel also has had a long association with director Cameron Crowe, who has a home here with his wife, Nancy Wilson of the rock group Heart (they also have a home in California). Crowe has used Gabriel's music in almost all his movies, most notably in 1989's "Say Anything." The scene in which star John Cusack holds a boom box over his head playing Gabriel's sublime "In Your Eyes" — letting the music speak for him to his girlfriend — was recently named the top musical moment in film history by movie magazine Empire.

Gabriel is touring in support of his new album, "Up," his first new studio recording since 1992's "Us." The album has been a commercial dud, perhaps because of its heavy themes of maturity and mortality.

But Gabriel has the ability to make his music richer in concert, because he is one of rock's most creative showmen. Beginning as a teenager in the art-rock band Genesis in the early 1970s, and continuing through his solo career, which began in the late '70s, he's expanded the boundaries of rock performance. His earliest experiments with masks and robes met with some derision, but he later abandoned costumes and spearheaded the creative use of lighting and staging, which continues on the latest tour.

He reportedly has pulled out all the stops for this one. Staged in the round, the circular set has two levels — heaven and earth, Gabriel explains — but they change positions, so heaven becomes earth and vice versa. One level has a moving ramp — like people-movers in airports — so Gabriel can move across the stage while standing stock still.

During the show, he walks upside down, rides a bicycle and, in the show's most bizarre moment, runs around inside a giant plastic see-through ball, inspired by the Habitrail of his daughter's hamster.

The reviews have been mixed, with some critics saying that all the stage business obscures the music, while others think the spectacle fits the music.

Also on the bill are the Blind Boys of Alabama, the energizing, uplifting gospel group, and Tanzanian singer Hukwe Zawose. Both do opening sets and also accompany Gabriel on a few songs.

Patrick MacDonald: 206-464-2312 or pmacdonald@seattletimes.com.