Ben Folds is ‘Capable of Anything’

Ben Folds has always enjoyed defying expectations. The band he led for many years, Ben Folds Five, was a trio, not a quintet. And while the Winston-Salem native is no comedy act, a sense of humor informs his emotionally rich, supremely melodic works, music he once characterized as “punk rock for sissies.” Having conquered multiple musical forms and media, these days Folds seamlessly blends his rock sensibilities with orchestral accompaniment. Joined by the Asheville Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Darko Butorac, Ben Folds comes to the Thomas Wolfe Auditorium on October 10.

During its run – 1994 to 2000 and then again for a few years in the early 2010s – the guitar-less Ben Folds Five scored four Top 40 singles on the U.S. Alternative Airplay chart. The band’s biggest success, 1997’s Whatever and Ever Amen sold more than a million copies. From there, Folds launched a solo career, building upon many of the same musical values: strong piano-based melodies, wry and incisive lyrics and sharp hooks.

Folds’ artistry has long extended beyond alt-rock. An enthusiastic collaborator, he has worked with Amanda Palmer, Nick Hornby, William Shatner and others. Folds has composed for soundtracks including the brand-new “Peanuts” special Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical. He has ventured into acting, and served as a judge on an NBC talent competition, The Sing-Off. He hosted a podcast, and he’s a published author (2019’s A Dream About Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons).

Beginning in 2005, Folds began a series of collaborations with symphony orchestras in Australia and the U.S. His 2015 Concerto for Piano and Orchestra claimed the top spot on two Billboard charts. The artistic success of those ventures led him farther into that world. In 2019 – halfway through the first presidential term of Donald Trump – he took on the role of artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at Washington D.C.’s Kennedy Center. Folds’ role looked to be apolitical, and the then-president initially displayed little or no interest in the cultural activities of the NSO and Kennedy Center.

“Because [in his first term] he never tried to make the Kennedy Center an extension of his partisan politics, I wasn’t going to be a dick and say, ‘I’m not [working for] the Kennedy Center because I don’t agree with the president,” Folds says today. During his time with the NSO, Folds launched a concert series showcasing classical and modern music, worked to encourage more listeners to develop appreciation for classical music, and established music advocacy programs for students.

But in early 2025, Trump initiated his return to the White House with a series of initiatives purportedly designed to purge the country of what he viewed as “woke” sentiments and practices. That effort included firing and replacing all members of the Kennedy Center’s board of directors with his ideological acolytes. In response, Folds resigned. If he had stayed on, he explains, “I was going to have to be a pawn and stand behind him while he talks.” Moreover, Folds believed that Trump’s close involvement would discourage quality artists from performing at the Kennedy Center.

Happily for fans of culture, art and music, Folds got in a parting shot. Released on July 4, Ben Folds Live with the National Symphony Orchestra is drawn from two autumn 2024 performances at the Kennedy Center. The 14-track album features re-imagined arrangements of classics from Folds’ catalog plus new works written for orchestra. For Folds, there’s no line between the two forms. “It’s all part of the same thing,” he says.

Folds has heard that some listeners prefer the new, orchestral versions of songs like “Still Fighting It,” originally written and recorded for his solo debut, 2001’s Rockin’ the Suburbs. Fans thinking of the Live with the NSO version as “possibly the [most] valid version of the song is a great surprise,” he says.

Darko Butorac is Music Director for the Asheville Symphony Orchestra, and he’ll be conducting the ASO when Folds joins them onstage. It won’t be the first time the two men have worked together. “Coming out of the pandemic, Ben was about to tour with some newer pieces that he had written,” Butorac recalls. “I was Music Director of the Tallahassee Symphony at that time, and we were the first orchestra on the tour. It was such a treat!”

Performing with an orchestra is freeing for Ben Folds, but perhaps not in the way one might expect. “I’ve played with so many orchestras that I now know not to play everything,” he says. And that sometimes catches his collaborators off guard. “A lot of times the conductor asks for more of my piano in his hot spot [monitor speaker],” Folds explains. “I’m sitting there going, ‘Dude, I’m not even playing! You can turn it up if you want to.’”

Orchestra musicians get a few hours at most in rehearsal with Folds before a performance, and they play with sheet music. “Eight hours prior to the show, none of these people knew the music,” Folds says with a laugh. And as with a conventional rock concert, spontaneity reigns. “My tempos are steady; they’re the same every night,” Folds emphasizes. “But with an orchestra, god knows what you’re going to get from song to song.”

He recalls a recent performance of the song “Kristine from the 7^th Grade.” One part of Folds’ score calls for the cellists to play staccato: short, detached notes with silence between them. “But they all decided to bow it, to play it legato [smooth and continuous notes],” Folds says. “Suddenly I had to interpret the next line differently than I would have. And I don’t mind those kind of curve balls.”

Butorac feels the same way. “The opportunity for improvisation – as we would find in popular music – is not always present” in an orchestral context, he concedes. “But individual expression takes place within the parameters that are on the page. So even with the most scripted performance material, the individuality of the musicians comes through.”

While readily acknowledging Ben Folds’ compositional skills, Butorac says that in his view, “Ben’s biggest genius is [in] his lyrics. His words are touching; they connect with audiences on a deep, personal level.” And that connection affects the orchestral musicians onstage, too. “For all these songs that we do with him, the music is tied into the lyric,” he says. “And it supports the lyric. That’s where the expression is geared.”

Making Live with the National Symphony Orchestra was an exciting endeavor for Folds. “We had two [nights] to do everything,” he says, emphasizing that most modern post-production “fixes” aren’t possible on orchestral recordings. “It holds your feet to the fire of being in the moment.” Folds believes that there’s a wisdom greater than a musician’s studio editing skills. In performance, “if there’s a bad moment, the next moment recovers, and that tells a story. It’s pretty cool.”

Popular thinking often holds that rock musicians are edgy while orchestral players are comparatively stiff and uptight. Ben Folds isn’t having it. “With an orchestra, you’re trying to get 80 people on the same page,” he explains. “It’s the most rough and tumble music you’ll ever see played!”