Come enjoy a special evening with the iconic Kyshona at a new venue for MACC!

General Admission $25 - Doors at 6:15 PM

VIP Admission $50 - Includes pre-show reception at 6 PM and preferred seating

The Merriweather Arts and Culture Center is thrilled to welcome Kyshona back to Columbia for a special performance at Slayton House in Wilde Lake. Kyshona last performed in Columbia in 2023 as part of a collaboration with members of the Howard County Youth Orchestra at Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Kyshona’s performance at Slayton House will follow a week-long residency in Howard County Public Schools, where she will be working with students to explore songwriting and telling their life stories through music. Kyshona’s school residency will be the third produced by MACC, and follows successful residencies featuring Las Cafeteras in 2024 and The Reminders in 2023.

The Merriweather Arts and Culture Center is able to produce school residencies free-of-charge for HCPSS because of the generous support of our community. Please consider making a donation at the link below to help us continue to bring world-class musicians to our local schools to help enrich and inspire our students.

https://www.merriweatherarts.org/individual-support

About Kyshona

Kyshona is an artist ignited by untold stories, and the capacity of those stories to thread connection in every community. With the background of a licensed music therapist, the curiosity of a writer, the patience of a friend, the vision of a social entrepreneur, the resolve of an activist, and the voice of a singer, Kyshona is unrelenting in her pursuit for the healing power of song. She lends her voice and music to those that feel they have been lost, silenced, forgotten or alone. Through her organization Your Song, she facilitates therapeutic songwriting sessions with groups and individuals in hopes of reconnecting those who are divided. Of her past releases, one fan reviewer wrote: “Amidst these hard, divisive times, her music is a salve for the grief many of us are feeling about the resulting loss of family, friends, and community.”

Widely regarded as one of the major music influences of our generation, Emmy-nominated composer and singer-songwriter Ben Folds joins the Howard County Youth Orchestra for a special live performance of songs from Folds’ enormous body of genre-bending work. Having performed with some of the world’s greatest symphony orchestras over the last two decades, Folds currently serves as Artistic Advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra, and he is a dedicated advocate for arts education. His performance with HCYO is one-night-only, and promises to be an unforgettable experience!

Date: Sunday, May 18, 2025
Time: 7:30 PM (Doors Open at 6:30 PM)
Venue: Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Parkway, Columbia, MD

Tickets: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/15006182B3FD5003

Tickets start at just $25, with premium seating available for $75. Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, December 13, 2024, at 10:00 AM.

MACC Donors have access to a special presale starting Wednesday, December 11 at 10 a.m. Presale codes will be sent via email by 7 a.m. on Wednesday, December 11. Donate here.

About Ben Folds:

Born and raised in North Carolina, Folds first rose to fame in the mid-’90s with Ben Folds Five, whose acerbic, genre-bending take on piano pop helped define an entire era of alternative rock. After scoring multiple hit singles and a gold record with the band, Folds launched his solo career in 2001, releasing a series of similarly acclaimed albums that would firmly establish him as one of the most ambitious and versatile songwriters of his generation. In 2010, Folds teamed up with celebrated author Nick Hornby on a collaborative record titled Lonely Avenue; in 2014, he composed and performed his first piano concerto for the Nashville Symphony and Nashville Ballet in 2015, he recorded an album with the classical ensemble yMusic; in 2017, he became the artistic advisor to the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, where he began curating a series of performances marrying contemporary artists with symphonic orchestration; in 2019, he released his New York Times best-selling memoir, A Dream About Lightning Bugs; and in 2021, he launched the Lightning Bugs podcast, an interview series on creativity and process with guests as diverse as Jon Batiste, Sara Bareilles, Bob Saget, and Rainn Wilson. Folds also revealed himself to be a prolific photographer as a member of Sony's prestigious Artisans Of Imagery, with gallery shows in the US and Europe, appeared onscreen in films and television (most recently playing himself in three episodes of the hit Amazon Prime series The Wilds), composed music for a 25-minute stage adaptation of Mo Willem’s Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs (which premiered at the Kennedy Center), earned an Emmy nomination for his compostion of the theme song for a popular new Peanuts animated TV special, and serves on the boards of the Arts Action Fund, the Nashville Symphony and Planet Word, a new immersive museum in Washington, DC, dedicated to celebrating the power of language.

About Howard County Youth Orchestra:

Formerly the High School Gifted and Talented Orchestra, this group has recently been renamed the Howard County Youth Orchestra. The orchestra got their start as the Howard Regional Youth Orchestra over a quarter century ago.  One of Maryland's premier youth orchestras, the HCYO has performed at New York's Carnegie Hall, Washington, DC's Kennedy Center, The Midwest Clinic in Chicago, and Baltimore's Meyerhoff Symphony Hall. In 2019, they shared the stage with TwoSet Violin for two incredible concerts, and in 2022, they had the distinct pleasure of performing with Time for Three. In 2023, they performed at Merriweather Post Pavilion with Guster, and followed that performance with a collaboration in 2024 with Tank and the Bangas, also at Merriweather Post Pavilion.