Ben Folds

Born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on September 12, 1966, singer-songwriter Ben Folds is best known as the frontman of the Ben Folds Five. A music obsessive from the age of nine, he grew up playing drums in high school groups, eventually becoming a session musician in Nashville and dropped out of a music course at Miami University before returning home to North Carolina and starting quirky pop trio Ben Folds Five. Standing out amid a sea of mid-1990s guitar bands, Folds' smart, funny, piano-led songs resulted in four successful albums and a reputation for high energy live shows, which the man himself described as "punk rock for sissies". The Ben Folds Five split in 2000 and Folds launched his solo career with the well-received Rockin' the Suburbs (2001) and a reworking of the album's title track with Star Trek actor William Shatner for the soundtrack to the film Over The Hedge. He went on to release the US hit albums Songs for Silverman (2005) and Way to Normal (2008) and set novelist Nick Hornby's lyrics to music on Lonely Avenue (2010). After the reunion of the Ben Folds Five between 2011 to 2013, the frontman composed his first piano concerto with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and recorded the album So There (2015) with the yMusic Ensemble. As an artistic advisor for the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., he organized concerts featuring guest performers Sara Bareilles, Jon Batiste, Regina Spektor and Emily King. In 2023, he released the album What Matters Most, featuring Dodie and Tall Heights, and the Christmas song collection Sleigher (2024), which included a duet with Lindsey Kraft.