TORONTO -- Peter Gabriel is certainly being put through his paces on his Growing Up Live tour, which pulled into the Air Canada Centre last night.

When Gabriel wasn't walking upside down, alongside his daughter/backup singer Melanie (Downside-Up), he was alternately acting as a camera man (The Barry Williams Show), bouncing around the stage in a transparent sphere (Growing Up) or riding a bike (Solsbury Hill).

It was quite the physical demonstration given the London-born singer-songwriter is 52 years old and hardly in the best shape of his life.

Frankly, all of the activity, which took place on an astonishing circular and rotating centre stage -- designed by Quebec theatre director Robert Lepage -- wouldn't have worked for just anyone.

But somehow Gabriel, formerly the frontman for British prog-rockers Genesis in the '70s, pulled it off.

"One of my daughters used to have a hamster and we used to put him in something similar," he joked after his show-stopping turn around the stage in the plastic bubble.

Perhaps Gabriel just wanted to give fans something they'd never forget.

It has been a decade since he last hit the road and that tour, Secret World Live, was also designed by Lepage.

Gospel voices

This time out, the two men set out to reflect the title of Gabriel's first non-soundtrack album in ten years, Up, by creating a show with with the emphasis on the vertical.

For example, drummer Ged Lynch was slightly below the rest of the musicians, in the centre of the stage and covered by a house-like structure, during the first couple of songs before being elevated upwards.

At other times, egg-and-moon-like spheres dropped down from above, acting as screens onto which images were projected, and circular scaffolding moved vertically up and down.

Even opening act, The Blind Boys Of Alabama, who joined Gabriel for another new song, Sky Blue, were lowered and raised as they sat on their seats and chimed in with their spectacular gospel voices.

The openness of the stage, which included a moving sidewalk, also made Gabriel and his band seem accessible, even exposed and vulnerable, depending upon the tune.

The two-hour-and-35-minute show opened with Gabriel alone at his keyboards, for Here Comes the Flood, from his 1977 first solo album.

But by the second song, Darkness, a new track from Up, he was joined by his six-piece band including audience favourite and veteran bass player Tony Levin, or "the king of the bottom end," as Gabriel described him.

It took a few songs in before the players seemed comfortable enough to move away from their static positions. Red Rain, the oldie but goodie from 1986's So and Secret World, from 1992's Us, finally loosened them up.

Spiritual highlight

Subsequent set highlights proved to be a mix of older tunes like Shock The Monkey, Mercy Street, Solsbury Hill, and Sledgehammer, mixed in with such Up songs as Sky Blue and More Than This, and the brand new track, Animal Nation, which saw opening acts and Tanzanian singers Hukwe and Charles Zawose, return to the stage to deliver some startling vocals.

They were welcomed back again for what turned out to be the spiritual highlight of the night, a heavily percussive version of In Your Eyes.

"When you're past fifty, it's about quality, not quantity," said Gabriel, explaining why it took him so long to release a new album.

And quality is exactly what concertgoers got last night. (More on Peter Gabriel)

JAM! Rating: 4 out of 5