ShareBen Folds has released his latest album What Matters Most. The ten song set was co-produced by Folds and Joe Pisapia in East Nashville.
The masterful collection is a bold, timely, cinematic work. It is one that examines the tragic and the absurd in equal measures as it reckons with hope and despair, gratitude and loss, identity and perspective. The songs are bittersweet, hilarious at times, yet often laced with a quiet sense of longing and dread. Taken as a whole, the result is an undeniably joyful album that refuses to succumb to the weight of the world around it, an ecstatic reminder of all the beauty and promise hiding in plain sight for anyone willing (and present enough) to recognize their moments as they arrive.
Folds says, “There’s a lifetime of craft and experience all focused into this one record. Sonically, lyrically, emotionally, I don’t think it’s an album I could have made at any other point in my career.”
Ben Folds also announced an initial round of new tour dates in support of What Matters Most, with shows across the UK, including a concert at the prestigious Royal Albert Hall in London.
Born and raised in North Carolina, Folds first rose to fame in the mid ’90s with Ben Folds Five, whose acerbic, genre-bending take on piano pop helped define an entire era of alternative rock. After scoring multiple hit singles and a gold record with the band, Folds launched his solo career in 2001, releasing a series of similarly acclaimed albums that would firmly establish him as one of the most ambitious and versatile songwriters of his generation.
In 2010, Folds teamed up with celebrated author Nick Hornby on a collaborative record titled Lonely Avenue. In 2014, he composed and performed his first piano concerto for the Nashville Symphony & Nashville Ballet. In 2017, he became the artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Centre, where he began curating a series of performances marrying contemporary artists with symphonic orchestration. In 2019, he released his New York Times best-selling memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs; and in 2021, he launched the Lightning Bugs podcast, an interview series on creativity and process with guests as diverse as Jon Batiste, Sara Bareilles, and Rainn Wilson, and his close friend Bob Saget.
TOUR DATES 2024
November
| Date | Venue |
|---|---|
| Fri 8th | The Forum Bath |
| Sat 9th | Brighton Dome |
| Sun 10th | Symphony Hall Birmingham |
| Tue 12th | New Theatre Oxford |
| Wed 13th | Royal Albert Hall London |
| Fri 15th | Sage Gateshead |
| Sat 16th | Grand Opera House York |
| Sun 17th | O2 Apollo Manchester |
| Mon 18th | Usher Hall Edinburgh |
| Wed 20th | The Helix Dublin |
Tickets are now on sale
www.benfolds.com