Ben and the BSO

My sister and I drove to Baltimore tonight to see Ben Folds in concert with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. I have to say that it was pretty freakin' awesome. I love Ben Folds already, but it was just extra cool to see him backed by a full orchestra. Many of his songs lend themselves very well to orchestration. Our seats were right over the stage left. We were very close to the musicians, but unfortunately we were looking at Ben's back instead of his face or from the side. It was cool all the same. The people sitting behind us were a little obnoxious. They were screamers and liked to scream stuff like, "Ben we love you!" It was funny the first few times, but after that it got annoying. Some of the members of the orchestra even started looking our way with looks of disdain on their faces. The crowd was certainly younger and most were big Ben fans, as evidenced by much singing along. There was even one guy in the first few rows of the orchestra who totally flipped out when Ben came on stage. Think teenage girl at a Beatles concert in the mid 60s. I think the most amusing part of the whole thing, however, was watching one of the percussion guys play the crap out of a cowbell during One Angry Dwarf. This was Ben's first symphonic concert in the US. His first symphonic concert ever, was back in March of this year when he played with the West Australian Symphony in Perth, Australia. That concert comes out on DVD in December. The DVD will certainly make it onto my Christmas wish list. Hopefully he'll do more concerts like this in the future, because while the DVD may be cool, it would be much cooler to see it again live.

Click here to read an article in the Baltimore Sun about Ben's collaboration with the BSO.