There is something quite incongruous about a grand piano sitting beneath the open sky at Manly’s North Head Sanctuary. Tonight, Ben Folds arrives at Night at The Barracks with little more than that piano, a microphone and more than three decades of songs behind him.

It is a dramatic setting for an artist who has spent his career proving that a piano can create as much commotion as a wall of guitars. From Ben Folds Five through his solo work and orchestral collaborations, Folds has built a catalogue on caustic humour, sharp observation and melodies that frequently conceal a darker sting.

The stripped-back Ben Folds & A Piano format puts all of that under a microscope. There is no band to add muscle and no elaborate production to manufacture momentum, leaving Folds to do the heavy lifting himself. He attacks the keys one moment and pulls back into something far more delicate the next, his playing retaining the physicality that has always separated him from the more genteel end of piano pop and his dry humour keeps any sentimentality firmly at bay.

There is no grand reckoning with three decades of music here, just an artist still clearly enjoying what happens when he sits down at a piano. And judging by the noise coming back at him, the crowd wouldn’t have it any other way.

Go HERE for info on Night Under the Stars.

Images Deb Pelser

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