Sunday 12th June 2016. My last show of the weekend, back at the Millenium centre for Ben Folds. Another performer I know nothing about,having never heard any of his music. Of course as this is Festival of voice season that means nothing. Over the past week or so everything I have seen has been brilliant, which means as usual tonight will be the same.

Firstly we have Lera Lynn on stage. From Nashville with a very distinctive sound. A two piece band with some superb guitar work from both of them. They played for about 40 mins with very relaxing melodies and some excellent singing from Lera (very impressed with her voice). They did a great version of fire at the start of their set. And continued in that vain all through, culminating in another brilliant cover of ring of fire towards the end. A thoroughly enjoyable start to a great evening, definitely going to watch out for her in the future.
After the break we move onto Ben Folds with Ymusic, a six piece band made up of strings, woodwind and brass, a mini orchestra. From the start of the set, Ben’s writing tested these musicians with some technically difficult routines, which they breezed through, and were well up to the task, taking everything in their stride to make it all work. I was very impressed with the way Ben writes, very clever as to build a song from scratch, adding bits here and there, with the help of the mini orchestra he creates a really fresh and distinctive sound.

His following is strong with a nearly full auditorium,he gave his fans a really amazing show. At one point creating a song on stage with the use of a Welsh phrase, to everyone’s delight was a touch of genius, with the help of the musicians add libbing  as the song progressed. Another high point was some audience participation, some really nice tones coming from the crowd and was actually a joy to hear. Very pleasing from a Welsh crowd. Shows what we can do when we put our minds to it.

Another fabulous night of music closed the Festival of Voice for this year. I must say I was very impressed with this show and towards the end realised just how much an accomplished pianist Ben Folds is, I am pretty much a fan now, and wouldn’t mind seeing his show again the next time he visits Cardiff.