Ben Folds Live with the National Symphony Orchestra

🎹 Ben Folds LIVE with the National Symphony Orchestra

Artist: Ben Folds
Orchestra: National Symphony Orchestra
Conductor: Steven Reineke
Venue: Kennedy Center Concert Hall, Washington D.C.
Label: New West Records
Format: 2×LP Vinyl (Black)
Release Date: March 2023

Some artists adapt. Ben Folds orchestrates. Known for his lyrical honesty, piano-driven storytelling, and genre-fluid sensibility, Folds brings his catalog into orchestral form with humor, vulnerability, and technical finesse. The NSO doesn’t just accompany—they elevate.

🎶 Tracklist Highlights

• Capable of Anything – introspective and expansive
• You Don’t Know Me – playful and layered
• Brick – devastatingly tender with string undercurrents
• So There – chamber pop meets symphonic sweep
• Not the Same – communal and cathartic
• Steven’s Last Night in Town – theatrical and jazzy
• Landed – soaring and emotionally raw

Culminating more than two decades of performing with some of the world’s greatest orchestras, indie music icon Ben Folds performs his hits and new music with the National Symphony Orchestra in a live orchestral concert album conducted by Steven Reineke and recorded to soldout audiences over two nights at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the Fall of 2024. Widely regarded as one of the major music influences of our generation, the Emmy-nominated artist’s enormous body of genre-bending sound includes pop anthems with Ben Folds Five, multiple solo albums, and numerous collaborative records. In 2015, his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra debuted at #1 on both the Billboard classical and classical crossover charts. His latest pop album was released in 2023 to rave reviews and sold-out performances, and was followed with the release of his critically-acclaimed holiday album in 2024.

The arrangements are crafted to reveal new emotional registers in Folds’ songwriting. Studio monitors will highlight the microdynamics of orchestral phrasing, vocal nuance, and the emotional fingerprint of live ensemble interplay.

Visually, the cover is a black-and-white photograph of the performance—Ben at the piano, conductor mid-gesture, orchestra in full focus. It’s not just documentation—it’s editorial reverence.