Ben Folds with Royal Northern Sinfonia The Sage Gateshead 11 July 2014
This concert was part of Ben Folds’ 2014 global orchestral tour. Billed as “The Ben Folds Orchestral Experience,” it features his new classical piano concerto as well as a selection of his pop hits arranged for orchestral performances. Folds was the front man of Ben Folds Five before going on to have a successful solo career. Laura is a big fan, and Ben was on her list of people she has never seen, so off we went to his concert at the Sage last night. Fold’s music has somehow passed me by, so I went along with out of curiosity and looked forward to experiencing his songs for the first time. He was accompanied by the Royal Northern Sinfonia for the Sage concert; it seems he picks up “local” orchestras for each segment of the tour. The Royal Northern Sinfonia played with Ben for three nights, at Bristol Colston Hall, Manchester Bridgewater Hall, and at last night’s concert at the Sage.
I always seem to want to compare acts with those I am more familiar with, and I found this quite tricky to do in the case of Ben Folds. He has his own style, although I could sometimes hear influences from perhaps early Elton John, Billy Joel, Jimmy Webb, and American pop: The Monkees, The Lovin’ Spoonful. He is certainly a very talented and accomplished singer-songwriter. Ben was seated centre-stage at his grand piano, surrounded by the orchestra. He started with a few of his songs, which had been reworked for the orchestral accompaniment. He then played his new Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, which, he explained, he had recently been commissioned to write for a ballet. Now I’m not that used to attending classical concerts, but I really enjoyed this piece, which ran at around 25 minutes. One more song and there was a short interval.
Laura and I are were sitting in the upper level, looking down on the right of the stage, and the sound wasn’t too good there, so we moved to some empty seats up the back of the hall for the second part of the concert, and the sound quality was much better. The highlight of the second part of the evening was a completely new, improvised on the spot, piece. It was fascinating to watch the music develop in front of us, in real-time, Ben playing each part of the orchestra their parts on the piano, before they all played together. The piece featured Ben singing the lyrics (but not the tune) of the Kinks’ Sunny Afternoon, a copy of which a member of the troupe had apparently found in the restaurant. He explained that this follows similar, but also unique, improvisations in Bristol (a song about the Colston toilets) and Manchester (where the lyrics where the fire drill instructions). Pretty neat or what?! 🙂 
In another touching moment Folds led us phone to the mike so that he could play us his 14 year old daughter’s new song, which was really good (we all promised not to tell her).
Ben Folds is a big supporter of orchestras, and encouraged us all to support our local musicians. As we left the hall, we were handed a flyer promoting upcoming concerts by the Royal Northern Sinfonia playing Beethoven’s Six “Pastoral”, which included a message from Folds: “It’s long as shit, so if you haven’t heard classical music before you need to have patience you’re going to hear something that was probably as revolutionary as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It was written in 1825 and by that point a lot of Beethoven’s peers just viewed him as, well, some deaf gut who’s kind of losing his shit, you know, he’s meandering. he’s rambling. But he was like Lil’ Wayne here, he was building the beat. If you lie with your head between the speakers, if you have the patience, make yourself into a trapped audience, you will realise that this guy was sick, you know. He must have torn his hair out to get here. Its insane”. Indeed.
An interesting artist, and an excellent concert.
Setlist was something like this: Effington; Smoke; Jesusland; Picture Window; Concerto for Piano and Orchestra; Steven’s Last Night in Town. Interval. Zak and Sara; Landed; Fred Jones, Parts 1 & 2; Gracie; Not the Same; Sunny Afternoon (Orchestra Improvisation using the Kinks’ lyrics); Brick; One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces. Encore: The Luckiest. Encore 2: Kate; Rockin’ the Suburbs
Archive for the ‘Ben Folds’ Category
12 Jul
Vintagerock's Weblog. 