IT is early morning in California when Stewart Copeland picks up the phone for our interview.

“Could you just give me 60 seconds? I’m just fixing a coffee,” he asks before the phone goes down and all I can hear are the sounds of a coffee machine whirring away in the background.

As one of the world’s great drummers you’d expect Stewart to be good at keeping time and true to his word, one minute later he’s back.

“I’m caffeine-ating now, I’m all yours,” he laughs.

The reason for our trans-Atlantic chat is Stewart’s impending arrival on our shores for three very special shows, including one at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall.

In Stewart Copeland Lights up the Orchestra he will be performing with the Manchester Concert Orchestra for an evening which celebrates Stewart’s career as both performer and composer.

To many fans he will forever be best known as drummer with The Police, one of the biggest rock bands in the world in the late 70s and early 80s. After the band disbanded in 1986 (they reformed briefly to mark their 30th anniversary in 2007) he became much in-demand as a composer of film soundtracks working on Rumble Fish, Wall Street and even the TV servies The Equalizer.

The concerts later this month will serve as a career retrospective.

“Whittling it down did take a lot of discipline and pain but I got it down into a manageable show,” he said.

The orchestral nature of the show has meant Stewart has had to revisit many of his compositions and songs from the Police and re-work them for an orchestra.

“Fortunately my years as a hired gun film composer taught me the skills I needed,” he said. “Involuntarily I became an orchestral arranger.

“I did study it in college but in my wild years in a rock band I never got to see a page of music during that whole time until on my first job as a film composer, the director Francis Coppola turned round and said ‘we need strings’. And so began a journey with orchestra.”

That journey has led Stewart to fully appreciate the art involved in composing for film.

“I firmly believe that the film composer has the highest set of musical skills of any kind of musician,” he said. “A film composer isn’t an artist, he is a craftsman. Music is a narrative point in itself. It tells the audience how to respond emotionally to any line of dialogue. It’s the music that makes us care.”

The contrast between being a rock musician - Stewart was named the 10th best drummer in the world by Rolling Stone magazine - and a composer was something that he really had to learn.

“When you work for the man you have to go places and then learn things that you wouldn’t have done as an artist,” he said. “As an artist you find your own path and do what turns you on and don’t really go beyond that.

“I retired from composing for film 10 years ago but I very much value the 20 years I spent before the mast as a hired gun. I took all those ill-gotten skills and now I’ll be appearing in Manchester with a big-ass orchestra and I’ll be letting it rip.”

Working with an orchestra is a totally different experience than being part of a rock band.

“When you’re making a record you just try things,” he said. “It’s like ‘I’ll plug in my guitar and see what happens’. You can experiment all day. But when you show up at rehearsal with 65 musicians looking at you and you’ve two-and-a-half hours to get your show together you really don’t want to be experimenting and improvising. You want to put it all on the page. It means you have to have done your homework.”

Stewart has worked with renowned producer Troy Miller in putting the show together. Troy will conduct on the night with Stewart taking his place behind the drumkit.

The show will offer a fascinating contrast between Stewart and the orchestra.

“I’m off the leash but they don’t like being let loose,” he said. “It’s a very different ethos between that of the rock musician and the musicians of the eye. Us rock and roll guys, we make it up as we’re going along. Players in orchestra only sound good if they all absolutely obey every scintilla of the notation on the page.

“But an orchestra is still a very human thing - it’s not a machine; they breathe together.”

It is normally the drummer in a band who provides that rock like-foundation.

“I’ve discovered after 60 years of banging stuff that I’m a wrong ‘un because I’m all over the shop,” he said. “There are certain singers who would rather that I provided that platform from which they could leap and ascend to the stars but that’s not me.”

Stewart Copeland Lights Up the Orchestra, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, Friday, March 29. Details from 0161 907 9000 or www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk