Photo Gallery of Ben Folds at UD

The Charity Concert Committee brought Ben Folds and a piano to the UD Arena on Sunday, April 18 and raised $7,000 for the American Cancer Society.

Kate Miller-Heidke, an Australian pianist and singer, opened for Ben Folds and a piano. She and her guitarist, her husband Keir Nuttall, played for a half hour and truly resonated with the audience about her songs about love and relationships.

Miller-Heidke hit quite a vocal range and mixed her classical vocal training into her music, giving her audience a unique, yet inspiring sound. For more information on Miller-Heidke, visit her website at http://www.katemillerheidke.com.

Ben Folds and a piano played for over an hour and a half under the red, green, blue, purple and white lights. From the first song he had the audience on their feet, singing and clapping along with him and his piano. His sarcastic, random songs and comments had the audience going.

"The opening act had a phenomenal voice," senior Marissa Danese said. "Ben Folds is always so enthusiastic. He always does things like that."

As he is prone to do at his concerts, Ben Folds broke out in an improvisational song about his stay at Dayton, particularly his experience at Denny's right near the hospital and cardiologist center.

"I just play on the piano," Folds said. "That was a really weird song though," referencing his Denny's musical creation.

Folds' musical creativity truly shined in the way he used his microphone as a drum, broke out maracas and a drum set with cymbals to set the tone of his music. His work on the piano was enough to ignite screams from the audience.

At one point in the concert, Folds managed to get the whole audience to sing together in a four-part harmony to his song "Not The Same." He asked everyone to know where they fell on a vocal range and demonstrated the harmony of each part. The whole arena sang in unison with Ben Folds and his piano Sunday night.

"I've decided he's going to be my piano teacher," junior Josh Cain said. "I also can't believe he got all of those people to sing in harmony. It was incredible."

Aside from his improvisational songs, Folds picked a member of the audience to come up on stage and sing with him a song from Dr. Dre's album, The Chronic. He sarcastically made a comment about Dr. Dre's album and requested the audience to write letters so that the album could be turned into a musical.

"You know some people are in tune with lyrics and others with music," Folds said. "You guys are cool to me, you seem to like the lyrics so I'll play something that I wrote," he said as he started to play a self-written show tune about a man who led a secret life. The audience clapped right along to the upbeat tune.

Folds' musical show at UD demonstrated his skills as a piano player, singer and songwriter. He ended the night with an encore.

For more information on Ben Folds, visit his website at www.benfolds.com.