Holland Festival Proms: Ben Folds & yMusic

Ben Folds & yMusic

Pop music with a classical ensemble – it can be an exciting combination, but it can also be pretentious. On their album So There, Ben Folds and yMusic prove that they fall in the first category, especially when they play live, as they do at this year's Holland Festival.

Ben Folds is one of the most versatile and successful American singer-songwriters around. Folds likes to bridge different musical genres which are not the most obvious combinations. The piano, his chief instrument, serves as the connecting element between rocky pop – or, as Folds sometimes describes it, 'punk rock for sissies' – and classical or jazzy sounds. Still, it was a real surprise when in 2014, after a string of pop albums, Folds released a concert for piano and orchestra. To many, an album in such a classic form on such traditional instruments felt like a radical change. According to Folds however, the piano concert he wrote is not all that dissimilar to his music on The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner, a record he released in 1999 with his band Ben Folds Five. On his website, he states: 'If you knocked the vocals off that record and string together all the instrumental parts, you'll hear something that sounds a lot like the concerto.'

After successfully touring the world with his piano concert, Folds wanted to release the piece on CD. As twenty minutes of music doesn't cover an album, he decided to add extra material. He began working on new instrumentals with an idea to enlist different collaborators, such as percussion ensembles or small chamber ensembles, which could help him produce an album of exciting crossovers. When Folds was introduced to the New York sextet yMusic, he was immediately enthralled and decided to do the whole album with them.

From the get-go, the group's goal was to avoid the compulsory and gratuitous. Even more important was the commitment never to use yMusic as mere ornamentation, an approach they referred to as '…and strings.' yMusic's unique configuration and their experience with contemporary classical music makes for a sound that is never kitsch. Unless, of course, it's what Folds consciously wants to achieve. He enjoys using irony and likes to cultivate his somewhat nerdy image. Some of the songs on So There are a response to the superficiality of American popular culture. But Folds doesn't spare himself either, infusing his lyrics with a good deal of self-mockery. Although many of the songs on So There are about failed relationships, Folds and yMusic manage to steer away from sentimentality.

All in all, So There's mix of pop and classical comes across as an organic whole, a successful experiment with potential for more. Folds likes to think so, too: 'This record is just the tip of the iceberg,' he says. 'There's much more to come. Innovations in pop music come slower and slower each year. I think one awesome door to walk through is this, the world of classical music from whence all our ideas of composition grew. That world is hurting right now and it could use pop musicians. And pop musicians could use the classical world because it's so full of possibility and sounds. It's endless.'