> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.hypebot.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # From Piano Rock to Paper Airplanes: A Brief History of Ben Folds Live - URL: https://www.hypebot.com/from-piano-rock-to-paper-airplanes-a-brief-history-of-ben-folds-live/ - Published: 2026-10-27T14:54:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-27T15:02:50.000Z - Description: From BF5's raucous piano rock to a toy orchestra and a downpour of paper, Ben Folds has kept audiences on their toes (even if they remain in their seats). - Author: Jeremy Young - Tags: Brief History, Ben Folds, ben folds five, Reunion, comeback, Touring, Live Performance, Performing Live, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Orchestra, piano, #Great-Reads, #coverstory # [**Ben Folds Five**](https://www.bandsintown.com/a/26083-ben-folds-five?utm%5Fsource=hypebot&came%5Ffrom=900) **are heading back on the road.** Announced October 21, their spring 2027 [reunion](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/reunion/) is the trio’s first tour since 2013, bringing [**Ben Folds**](https://www.bandsintown.com/a/483-ben-folds?utm%5Fsource=hypebot&came%5Ffrom=900), bassist **Robert Sledge** and drummer **Darren Jessee** together for dates beginning April 12 in Knoxville, TN. But this is just the latest chapter in Folds' rotating employment of musicians, choirs, artists, and audiences, as characters in the story of his sound. Over the years, the piano has stayed put. Who builds the music around it seems to keep changing. That makes this a great moment to revisit [a brief live history](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/brief-history/) that has taken some unusual turns. Across three decades, Folds has played the unruly piano frontman, toured alone, recruited ticket buyers as backing singers and composed music onstage with an orchestra waiting for instructions. He's even asked audience members to throw paper planes at him with written personal stories and setlist requests on them. Check his upcoming tour dates below, and let's fly through it! ## **The 1990s: Three people making a very big racket** Formed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1993, Ben Folds Five brought piano, bass and drums into an alternative-rock landscape full of guitars. But their appeal went well beyond the novelty of the instrumentation. Sledge’s distorted bass supplied weight and abrasion. Jessee gave the songs both propulsion and room to breathe. Their backing vocals could make a chorus sound sweet just as the instruments were getting nasty. Folds’ piano connected those extremes, moving between percussive pounding and passages that revealed how much musical information the band could squeeze into a few minutes. In a [*Stereogum* interview](https://stereogum.com/2225503/ben-folds-what-matters-most/interviews?ref=hypebot.com), Folds described bringing his theatrical songwriting together with a much heavier rhythm section. That combination helps explain why the trio worked: the friction of nerdy balladeer and sappy punk was part of the music. Their June 1997 *Sessions at West 54th* performance is an excellent place to witness this in action. It's a glorious racket; watch the rhythm section as closely as the piano player. There are three people doing the work here. Like, seriously: ***who stands up at the grand piano?!*** **+Read more:** [*"Dolly Parton Made Every Stage Feel Like Her Front Porch"*](https://www.hypebot.com/dolly-parton-made-every-stage-feel-like-her-front-porch/) ## **The early 2000s: The audience gets an arrangement** After the trio’s 2000 breakup, Folds released *Rockin’ the Suburbs* in 2001\. The following year’s *Ben Folds Live* documented another important configuration: one performer, one piano, and a roomful of people who could help fill the gaps. On “Army,” audiences supplied the instrumental lines. On “Not the Same,” they became backing singers. The crowd had a musical assignment, with its contribution becoming part of the arrangement. That changed the relationship between [performer](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/performing-live/) and [ticket buyer](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/ticketing/). Folds could make a solo show sound bigger by teaching the room what to do, while giving people something more specific than a chorus to shout back. It also offers a practical lesson for anyone taking a band’s songs out alone: an arrangement can change to suit the people available. Sometimes those people are standing on the other side of the stage. ## **2005: Taking unpredictability to the orchestra** In March 2005, Folds performed with the **West Australian Symphony Orchestra**, with the collaboration documented on *Live in Perth*. The orchestral setting gave his songs new colors and scale. It also accommodated something considerably less formal: “Rock This Bitch,” the improvisational concert tradition documented on his 2002 live album. Here was a much larger ensemble, with different working methods, participating in the same appetite for making something happen in the room. For an artist with Folds’ command of harmony and arrangement, the orchestra opened up possibilities beyond adding strings to familiar songs. We'll see this later on in full virtuosic effect at the Kennedy Center... The process of working with musicians could itself become part of the entertainment. ***+Read more:*** [*"The Story of 'That' Rooftop Concert"*](https://www.hypebot.com/the-story-of-that-rooftop-concert/) ## **2008–2013: What the Five brought back** Ben Folds Five reunited in September 2008 at UNC’s Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill to perform *The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner* in full for MySpace’s *Front to Back* series. A new album followed in 2012, along with a return to touring. By then, Folds had demonstrated how much he could do alone. Hearing the trio together again made Sledge and Jessee’s contributions especially clear; because a band develops its own sense of timing. For example: how hard to push a chorus, how long to leave a pause, when to follow someone into a detour. The 2012 Bonnaroo webcast gave fans an up-close reminder of that interplay, with the three musicians sharing the responsibility for the show’s momentum. That is also what makes the upcoming reunion interesting. These songs have traveled through many arrangements, but this particular group has its own way of playing them. ## **2015–2016: Finding another kind of band with yMusic** Folds’ collaboration with the six-member ensemble **yMusic** produced the 2015 album *So There* and another distinctive live format. Here, strings and winds are woven into the songs’ movement and rhythm. The small ensemble can move around the piano with a flexibility that gives the music a different character from either the trio or a full orchestra. This period deserves space in the story because Folds’ live career has involved several overlapping approaches. A new ensemble could bring out another set of possibilities in his writing without requiring him to abandon everything he had done before. ***+Read more:*** [*"Making the Case for Political Activism at Concerts"*](https://www.hypebot.com/making-the-case-for-political-activism-at-concerts/) ## **2017: Letting people watch the music get built** One of the most joyful demonstrations of Folds’ orchestral approach came at the Kennedy Center in 2017, when he composed a piece onstage with the **National Symphony Orchestra** and conductor **Edwin Outwater** in roughly ten minutes. The challenge of it is what made it so fun to watch in real time. There is a clock, an audience, and an orchestra waiting for usable instructions. But the lasting pleasure is hearing individual decisions accumulate into music. It is a performance about [listening](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/listening/) as much as invention. The players have to understand and respond to what Folds proposes, and the audience gets to follow that exchange. The clip makes the craft of composition accessible. You can hear how an idea grows, and how many people it takes to bring it to life. ## **2017: Letting the requests fly** The Paper Airplane Request Tour gave audience participation another physical form. Fans wrote song requests on paper, folded them into airplanes and launched them toward the stage. Folds picked them up and used them to shape the show. The format was announced as a tour in 2017 and returned in subsequent years, including 2024\. A familiar concert ritual became a shared event with a little suspense attached. - Which plane would he pick? - What would someone else request? - How would that choice change the evening? It gave fans a way to influence the performance and made the breadth of his catalog part of the attraction. ## **2017–2026: Building an audience — and defending its institution** Folds’ orchestral work eventually gave him a responsibility beyond his own concerts. In 2017, he became **the National Symphony Orchestra’s** first artistic adviser, helping connect contemporary artists and their audiences with the musicians at **the Kennedy Center** through [*Declassified: Ben Folds Presents*](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ben-folds-on-taking-a-stand-for-artistic-freedom-after-trumps-kennedy-center-takeover?ref=hypebot.com). In [his July 2026 written testimony](https://www.hypebot.com/an-open-letter-from-ben-folds/), Folds described how collaborators including **Sara Bareilles, Jon Batiste,** and **Regina Spektor** took the orchestral arrangements developed through those concerts to other orchestras around the country. A successful collaboration in Washington could help generate performances elsewhere, bringing more listeners into symphonic music. That work depended on artists having room to experiment. In February 2025, President Trump removed Biden-appointed trustees from the Kennedy Center’s historically bipartisan board. The reconstituted board elected him chairman and dismissed longtime president Deborah Rutter. **Folds resigned as NSO artistic adviser on February 12.** On leaving, Folds [said](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/ben-folds-on-taking-a-stand-for-artistic-freedom-after-trumps-kennedy-center-takeover?ref=hypebot.com): > *"The Kennedy Center is for the people. It’s not for political gain, but it became partisan."* He continued speaking out after leaving. At a July 21, 2026 congressional forum convened by Democratic lawmakers, Folds argued that the takeover had broken the separation between politics and the center’s artistic mission. He said he could no longer assure artists he invited that they would be protected from [political](https://www.hypebot.com/making-the-case-for-political-activism-at-concerts/) retaliation over their work. This chapter belongs in his live history because it shows how far his role had expanded: from bringing people into his own shows to helping sustain a place where other artists could take chances. His departure made the conditions behind those performances part of the story, too. ## **Back to three** Folds’ current schedule places the 2027 Ben Folds Five [reunion](https://www.hypebot.com/tag/reunion/) alongside orchestral engagements. Those approaches now coexist. Folds has spent years finding different ways to make a room participate. Next spring, Sledge and Jessee will be back to show what happens when these particular three musicians do it together. --- ## [**Ben Folds (solo) Tour Dates**](https://www.bandsintown.com/a/483-ben-folds?utm%5Fsource=hypebot&came%5Ffrom=900) ## [**Ben Folds Five Tour Dates**](https://www.bandsintown.com/a/26083-ben-folds-five?utm%5Fsource=hypebot&came%5Ffrom=900)