Cincinnati Pops Announces Additional Special Events For The 2022-2023 Season

The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra announced two additional special events for its 2022-2023 season: hip-hop artist Common will make his Cincinnati Pops debut on Tuesday, October 25, 2022 under the direction of Pops Principal Guest Conductor Damon Gupton, and singer-songwriter-pianist Ben Folds will perform an orchestra show with the Pops on Tuesday, April 25, 2023.

Common will join the Pops to perform music from his discography spanning three decades. A multi talented artist, Common won a Grammy Award in 2003 for "Best R&B Song" for Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop), featured on the 2002 soundtrack Brown Sugar, and can be seen on films such as American Gangster (2006), Terminator Salvation (2009), Just Wright (2010) opposite Queen Latifah, Now You See Me (2013), and the Oscar-nominated Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic, Selma (2014), in which Common portrayed activist James Bevel. For Selma, Common and John Legend won the Academy Award in 2015 and a Grammy Award in 2016 for "Best Original Song in a Motion Picture" for the song Glory, which was also performed by Common and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra on the Orchestra's sold-out Classical Roots concert in 2016. This Pops special event is a part of the Orchestra's 2022-2023 Multicultural Awareness Council (MAC) Series.

After a sold-out performance with the Cincinnati Pops in 2017, Ben Folds returns to Cincinnati for an evening of genre-bending music with the Pops, performing hits like The Luckiest, Capable of Anything, and Landed. The multi-platinum selling artist, who was a judge for five seasons on NBC's critically acclaimed a capella show The Sing Off, is a passionate advocate of symphony orchestras and widely regarded as one of the major music influencers of the generation. He has created an enormous body of music that includes pops albums with Ben Folds Five, multiple solo albums, and numerous collaborative records. His last album, So There (2015), was a blend of pop songs, and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra soared to the top of both the Billboard classical and classical crossover charts.

Tickets for all Cincinnati Pops' special events, including Ben Folds and Common, have an accessible starting price between $25 and $35. Subscribers to the Cincinnati Pops and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's 2022-2023 season receive first access to all special events with the ability to purchase tickets ahead of the general public. Subscribers may add tickets to Ben Folds, Common, or any other Pops special event when subscribing online at cincinnatipops.org or by calling the Box Office at 513.381.3300. Individual tickets for Ben Folds and Common go on sale to the general public beginning Tuesday, July 5, 2022 at 10 a.m.