When Ben Folds took the stage on Sunday night he was not a singer – he was a music teacher.

‘Now if you have a higher voice, start on this note and end up in an E minor,’ Ben Folds instructed the audience at the start of his song ‘Not the Same,’ where he broke the audience up into three different groups to sing three different harmonies as if they were in a music class. The only difference here was that instead of sitting in the corner of the classroom trying to stay quiet, almost every person in the audience sang his or her chosen part loudly – on- or off-key.

Using his hands as volume controllers, Folds made the audience sing loudly at one part, quieter at another, or made the right side sing one melody and the left side sing another, creating one chorus of people.

University Union’s annual Block Party brought three levels of a packed audience to the Carrier Dome – from the 20-yard line back. Even though both Ben Folds and opening act Guster made jokes about being exiled to a small section of the Dome, Folds gave the audience an excellent and interactive show Sunday night.

‘I’ve seen him perform before, but he was better, more bad a**,’ said Kevin McSheffrey, a junior information studies major. ‘He had a great set list. It was pretty funky.’

During his almost two-hour long set, Ben Folds acted the part of music conductor as he guided the audience through songs and sounds to accompany his music. He also taught the audience about his different musical techniques, such as playing the ‘prepared piano,’ which has a distortion pedal and Altoid cans on its strings. This transformed the piano so that it sounded like a xylophone or video game.

Folds also told the audience about instruments that were being used during songs such as the French horn, and guided them through claps during songs.

Much like in choir class, crowd members were exposed to several different genres of music. The set sampled a little bit of everything: blues, country, jazz, gospel and a capella. Though UU has been criticized for not bringing a hip-hop or pop act to campus, Ben Folds seemed to please everyone in the audience with his diverse genre and tempo selections.

With little fanfare or transition between songs, Folds jumped from one style to another, performing both slow and upbeat numbers over the course of his two-hour set.

Energy flowed in and out of the show between songs. Even when the tempo slowed and the audience sat, the crowd was still entranced by Folds’ ballads.

Highlights of the set included ‘Fred Jones Pt. 2,’ a waltz about a man in the newspaper industry, and ‘Brick,’ a slower, somber song about a couple dealing with the aftermath of an abortion. Instead of just sitting and listening to ‘Fred Jones Pt. 2,’ some students near the front of the stage actually stood up and slow danced with each other, eighth-grade style. Likewise, no one lost interest during the down-tempo ‘Brick.’

The audience also rallied to ‘Zak and Sara,’ an upbeat song that had the entire audience (even the third level) on its feet singing along.

Ben Folds really mixed it up when he played two different versions of the same song, ‘Dr. Yang.’

‘Now I’m going to play two songs off the same album… except one is fake,’ Folds told the audience.

He then performed a softer jazz version of ‘Dr. Yang,’ followed by a rocked-out version that shook the bleachers. The whole show was filled with that kind of varying emotion – at one point the audience would be standing still or sitting, and the next they were jumping up and down screaming lyrics.

In the middle of his set, Ben Folds left the other band members behind and performed solo with just his piano.

Folds played a range of songs both off his recent album ‘Way to Normal’ and his older favorites, but in the end he performed one of his most famous and high-energy songs, ‘One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces’ as an encore. Instead of just performing it, he took the song up twice as fast.

‘He did more songs off his new album than I thought he would, but it was cool because I really like his new album so I’m satisfied,’ McSherffrey said.

kaoutram@syr.edu

Published on April 26, 2009 at 12:00 pm