Ben Folds to Record Live Album with NSO
By • October 23, 2024 0 846
Ben Folds likes what he calls “a good dose of fear” every now and again. He is referring to his upcoming performances at The Kennedy Center October 25 and 26 where he will be showcasing greatest hits, new music and surprise guests at “Ben Folds: Recorded Live with the NSO in the Concert Hall.
“Making a live album no net is really a special thing,” he said in an interview with The Georgetowner. “I love albums and playing shows, but the combination is really pretty special with an orchestra, because the orchestra is a very one take beast.”
With a symphony orchestra, things can’t be fixed the same way they are in a recording studio. Folds shared that he is looking forward to the thrill that the audience is there for something that’s being documented.
“They’re not seeing the idea of an event, they’re there for the recording,” he added. “I love seeing records made like that, it’s very rare.”
Folds, 58, has been in the music industry for decades. The Grammy winner was part of the popular group Ben Folds Five, which disbanded in October 2000, and briefly reunited from 2011 to 2013. He was a judge on NBC’s “The Sing-Off” from 2009 to 2013 and published a memoir in July 2019. Since 2017, he has served as the first artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra.
“I love the newness and danger of things that you get to do as you go along,” Folds said. “For instance, no one would have ever cut me loose with a symphony orchestra to make a live album early in my career—at this point in my career, I have the choice to stay safe or I can do things that scare the shit out of me.”
Photo Courtesy Ben Folds.
Folds, an active member of Americans for the Arts and the Arts Action Fund, said his advocacy took a turn toward education and the arts when he realized “that there was this feeling on the political landscape of pissing into a fan or trying to hold your hand up to the ocean and stop a wave.”
“I feel like the way to rehabilitation of a slightly injured state of civilization and education is to start planting seeds,” he added. “Anything you can do as a musician, an artist or just a citizen to help things along without hitting hot buttons that are just cheap hot buttons that make everyone flip out and be completely unreasonable, hit those.”
Folds called his involvement with arts advocacy a “quiet way of political activism.” Arts education can also just make kids happier. According to U.S. News and World Report, arts education can help kids reduce stress, improve focus, develop social-emotional and interpersonal skills and much more.
“Kids growing up with a nice dose of music is just a happier childhood,” Folds said. “Music lowers dropout rates and improves testing in other areas like math and English.”
In addition to his live album with the NSO, Folds is doing something for the first time that (surprisingly) he hasn’t yet: release a Christmas album. The album, called “Sleigher,” is out October 25.
The album was an excuse to write songs, framed with the metaphor that the holidays are a rhyme and time. “Every year at the end of the year, Christmas comes up the same way a rhyme comes up at the end of a line,” Folds said. “Many things are the same—the same sounds, songs, TV ads, maybe you go to your grandmother’s house or whatever.”
At the same time, he explained, things can be vastly different. Some people you loved aren’t there anymore, others may have gotten divorced, married, or had kids and the kids are now bald and partners of the firm.
“So having Christmas be like this rhyming thread throughout the whole thing became a way for me to do songwriting, which explores the ‘where am I now?’” he said.
When Folds is in D.C., he enjoys stopping by 1789. He also walks up and down Georgetown streets to do some shopping. He’s also a fan of Planet Word (he’s also an advisory board member there) and stopping by Smithsonian museums when he can.
“I’ve also been going to Clyde’s for years,” he said. “One time I had a four-hour layover at the airport, so I took a car in and went to Clyde’s and walked around Georgetown before I went back to 35X or whatever that dreadful terminal is.” Stars. They’re just like us!
You can purchase tickets to Folds’ live album recording here.
