Musician Ben Folds Stuns Audience Composing A Song LIVE In 10 Minutes

We are still smiling over this amazing display of musical creativity and enormous talent! Ben Folds is the artistic advisor for the National Symphony Orchestra. This video clearly demonstrates why he was chosen. Many composers would be quite hesitant to take on a challenge like composing on the spot, but not Mr. Folds!

As Fold’s was introduced to an excited audience, the host asked for audience participation. First, choose a key that Ben would compose a song (A minor) and choose a tempo (upbeat). Finally, the audience was asked to shout out an interesting sentence from their program (“These new spaces are all designed to be flexible.”) For the final component of the challenge, Ben was asked to compose his piece using these elements in a mere 10 minutes! Our palms are sweaty just watching this video!

With no hesitation, Ben Folds sits down at the piano and begins playing a rhythm and singing his given sentence! If you think that’s all he has to offer, you’d be wrong. Continue watching, we guarantee it’s worth it! He maps the piece quickly in his head and then begins building his composition on the various instruments around him. Folds calls out music theory components to the musicians and of course, the talented Orchestra is completely following him!

Folds works his way around the orchestra, wind and reed instruments, then violins. With just those components, he asks them to play to verify that “it’s not crazy”. Of course, the sound is stunning! He quickly moves through the rest of the instruments so as not to go over his allotted 10 minutes. Then the final product was pieced together and performed live for a completely baffled musical audience. Ben Folds began singing through the section of the attendees program that contained his required sentence. The result is truly stunning! Such incredible talent not only in Ben Folds but in the musicians who happily followed him in this musical experiment!