Ben Folds returns to Sydney in February 2027 with the Sydney Symphony, reimagining two decades of songs for orchestra at Hordern Pavilion.
On a summer evening in Sydney, Moore Park has its own particular rhythm. The broad avenues around the Entertainment Quarter begin to fill as the day cools, cyclists pass beneath the trees and the city seems to loosen after the heat of afternoon. Beyond the park, the lights of the eastern suburbs begin to appear.
Inside Hordern Pavilion, another kind of evening will be taking shape.
At the piano will be Ben Folds, a musician whose songs have travelled remarkably far from the rooms in which they were first written. Around him will be the musicians of the Sydney Symphony, bringing strings, woodwind, brass and percussion to a body of work that has always sat comfortably between pop, rock, classical music and something harder to categorise.
Ben Folds will return to Sydney for two performances on 3 and 4 February 2027, more than two decades after his first collaboration with the Sydney Symphony. This time, the familiar songs will be heard again through a larger orchestral frame, with Folds at piano and voice and Sydney Symphony Conductor in Residence Benjamin Northey conducting.
It is a return that says something about the unusual musical territory Folds has occupied throughout his career. His songs can be immediate and conversational, sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortable, often deceptively simple. Placing them alongside a symphony orchestra does not necessarily make them grander. Instead, it can expose details that were always there.
Ben Folds And The Shape Of A Song
For listeners who came to Ben Folds through Ben Folds Five, the connection with the piano is inseparable from the music.
The trio helped establish a sound in which the piano could carry the weight normally associated with a guitar, combining force and rhythm with melodies that could shift suddenly from playful to melancholy. Songs such as Brick and other pieces from the band's catalogue became part of a wider musical vocabulary in the 1990s and early 2000s, while Folds' subsequent solo career allowed him to explore a broader range of arrangements and ideas.
His career has since moved through several musical worlds. There have been solo records, collaborations, film, television and theatre projects, orchestral performances and work as an advocate for music education and the arts. The Sydney Symphony describes him as an Emmy-nominated singer-songwriter, composer and New York Times bestselling author, while his current career continues to move between pop performance and orchestral collaborations.
That ability to move between settings is important to understanding why an orchestra has become such a natural part of his musical life.
The piano remains the centre, but the surrounding sound can change dramatically.
A melody that once seemed to belong entirely to three musicians in a room can acquire a different sense of space when carried by strings. A rhythmic figure can become something almost percussive when reinforced by a larger ensemble. A quiet passage can be allowed to breathe.
The songs remain recognisable, but the architecture around them changes.
Ben Folds Meets The Sydney Symphony Again
The relationship between Ben Folds and the Sydney Symphony stretches back more than 20 years, making the 2027 performances less a first meeting than a continuation of an artistic conversation.
There is something fitting about that history returning to Sydney.
The city has long had an appetite for musicians who move between popular and classical traditions, and the Sydney Symphony itself regularly works beyond the conventional boundaries of the concert hall. For Folds, orchestras have become more than an occasional backdrop. They are part of a way of reconsidering the songs themselves.
At Hordern Pavilion, that relationship will take place in a very different environment from the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall.
The Hordern is a venue with a long memory of its own. Opened in the early twentieth century, it has hosted generations of musicians, performers and public gatherings. Its location in Moore Park puts it within easy reach of the city but gives an evening there a different character from a concert on Bennelong Point.
There is more of a sense of arrival through the park. The walk from the surrounding streets brings with it the sounds of traffic and conversation before the doors open and the atmosphere shifts towards the stage.
For these performances, the orchestra will become part of that setting rather than being separated from it.
From Piano To Orchestra
One of the more interesting aspects of hearing Folds with a symphony orchestra is the tension between the intimacy of the piano and the physical scale of an ensemble.
A piano can sound almost conversational. It can deliver a lyric with the impression that the musician is speaking directly across a room. An orchestra works differently. Even in quiet passages, there is a sense of many people listening to one another and shaping the same piece of music at the same time.
Folds has spent much of his career exploring the expressive possibilities of the piano, often using it as a rhythmic instrument as much as a melodic one. In an orchestral setting, that role can become more nuanced.
The orchestra can extend a chord, underline a change in mood or create a counter-melody that was previously absent. It can make a familiar song seem temporarily unfamiliar, before the voice or piano brings it back into focus.
Benjamin Northey will conduct the Sydney performances. Northey is Chief Conductor of the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra, Conductor in Residence of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. His work has taken him across orchestral and operatic repertoire in Australia and internationally.
His connection with Folds is also established, having previously collaborated with the musician as part of a broad career working with artists across classical, contemporary and popular music.
A Songbook With Room To Move
The phrase songbook can sometimes make a concert sound like a retrospective, but Folds' music does not sit particularly still.
Part of its character comes from the way the songs have changed meaning over time.
A listener who first encountered one of his records decades ago may hear something quite different in it now. A lyric once associated with youth can acquire the weight of hindsight. A song that seemed comic can reveal something sad beneath the surface. A melody remembered from a recording can suddenly sound more vulnerable when performed in a different arrangement.
That is where an orchestral setting becomes useful.
Rather than simply reproducing the recorded versions, orchestral arrangements can give the songs space to evolve. The original shape remains recognisable, but the surrounding colours change.
Folds has described his work with orchestras as a significant part of his musical life, and the Australian performances in 2027 will place him alongside several of the country's major symphony orchestras. His national tour will also include performances with orchestras in Canberra, Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide.
Sydney's concerts will be among the early performances of that Australian journey.
Ben Folds In A Sydney Summer
There is a particular pleasure in a February concert in Sydney.
The city is still in its summer rhythm, but the frantic part of the season has begun to settle. The beaches remain busy, the evenings are long and the air can still hold the warmth of the day after sunset.
Moore Park offers a useful transition between the city and the suburbs. Depending on where the evening begins, dinner might be taken in Surry Hills or Paddington, or the journey may simply involve a walk through the park before arriving at the Hordern.
That setting matters because a concert is rarely only the performance itself.
There is the anticipation outside the venue, the brief pause before the lights fall, the rustle of people finding their seats and the particular silence that arrives when an orchestra is waiting to begin.
For an artist whose work has always balanced intimacy with theatricality, the setting may provide an interesting contrast. The songs are often close to the listener, but the sound of an orchestra changes the physical scale of that closeness.
It becomes possible to hear something personal in a larger room.
The Musician Behind The Music
Away from the stage, Folds has increasingly used his public profile to support music education and access to the arts.
In 2022, he launched a music education initiative in North Carolina that provides funding and keyboards to organisations offering free or affordable piano lessons to school-age children from economically disadvantaged households. He has also spent many years advocating for arts funding, music education and music therapy.
That work adds another dimension to his relationship with the piano.
The instrument is not simply a tool for writing and performing songs. It can be an entry point into music itself, particularly for young players who may encounter a piano long before they have access to an orchestra.
There is a quiet symmetry in that idea. Folds' career began with the physical immediacy of a pianist playing in a band, while his later work has repeatedly brought that same instrument into much larger musical environments.
In Sydney, the piano will again sit at the centre of a room filled with orchestral sound.
An Evening At Hordern Pavilion
The two Sydney performances will begin at 7pm, with doors opening at 6pm on both Wednesday 3 February and Thursday 4 February 2027. The concerts will be presented at Hordern Pavilion, 1 Driver Avenue, Moore Park.
The venue's scale should suit the occasion. Unlike a traditional symphony concert in a formal concert hall, the Hordern carries the atmosphere of a live music venue, with its history tied as much to popular culture as to formal performance.
That makes it an apt home for Folds.
His music has never fitted neatly into one category. It can belong to a rock audience, a singer-songwriter audience or an audience drawn to orchestral music. The arrangements can move between those worlds without requiring the listener to choose one.
For people who know the songs intimately, the interest will be in hearing them changed.
For those encountering Folds' music more casually, the orchestra may offer a different way into the catalogue, revealing the compositional detail beneath the familiar melodies.
And for Sydney itself, there is something satisfying about seeing an artist with such a long relationship with the city return to the same musical partnership after more than two decades.
Listening Differently
A familiar song can be like a street seen many times from the same window. You know its shape, its turns and where the light falls in the afternoon.
Then one day you walk it in another direction.
The buildings have not changed, but the perspective has.
That is the promise contained in an orchestral reimagining of Ben Folds' music. The songs do not need to become something else. They simply have the opportunity to reveal another side of themselves.
In February, as Sydney's summer evening settles over Moore Park, Folds will sit at the piano with the Sydney Symphony gathered around him. The sound will travel beyond the instrument, through the orchestra and into a venue built for the shared experience of live performance.
After more than 20 years since their first collaboration, the meeting will carry a little history with it.
But the music will still begin in the same place it always has: one piano, one voice and a song waiting to find out what it can become.
Event Details
What: Ben Folds with the Sydney Symphony
Where: Hordern Pavilion, 1 Driver Avenue, Moore Park, NSW 2021
When: Wednesday 3 February and Thursday 4 February 2027
Doors: 6pm
Start: 7pm
Artists: Ben Folds, piano and voice; Benjamin Northey, conductor
Presented by: Sydney Symphony Orchestra
More information: Ben Folds with the Sydney Symphony
Venue information: Hordern Pavilion