Vermont folk artist Sam Amidon comes to The Met as just one of a handful of performances celebrating the launch of his outstanding new album Bright Sunny South.

“It’s official. Sam Amidon has burnt everything to the ground. It smells good, now that the rain has come. I can see the tips of blades rising.” – Justin Vernon (Bon Iver)

“His interpretations are so singular that it stops mattering how (or if) they existed before.” – Pitchfork

While in his early 20s, Sam Amdion moved to New York City to pursue a growing passion for free jazz, which had begun to capture his imagination as a teenager. (He will expound enthusiastically, at some length, on the myriad connections between free jazz improvisation and old-time fiddle playing.) Deciding to teach himself to play guitar so he could get hired for studio session work and maybe figure out how to write his own songs, Amidon found himself drawn back to the folk music of his youth. he began to incorporate storytelling and elements of movement, particularly a kind of intense ‘liturgical’ dancing, into his shows.

Amidon describes Bright Sunny South as a “a lonesome record” and a return to the more spare sound of his 2007 self-recorded debut, But This Chicken Proved Falsehearted: “There was an atmospheric quality to my last two records; those albums are like a garden of sounds,” says Amidon, “but this one is more of a journey, a winding path. The band comes rushing in and then they disappear. It comes from more of a darker, internal space.”