Nels Cline: LOVERS, Sam Amidon

Guitarist NELS CLINE has led us on a thrilling cascade of reinventions and left turns, emerging from New York’s free jazz scene and currently holding the post as lead guitarist in Wilco. His love for noise and punk rock has led him into projects with the likes of Thurston Moore and Mike Watt, and his work with the Nels Cline Singers ranges from impassioned jazz to gurgling electronica. Pitchfork calls him “a quiet pioneer whose contributions to rock, jazz, and the avant-garde are deeply felt,” and Rolling Stone placed him at #82 in their list of all-time greatest guitarists.

On his latest album, Lovers, Cline tackles a combination of originals and American Songbook standards in a big-band jazz setting, which he’ll perform live at the bandshell.

SAM AMIDON is an unpredictable folk singer whose “highly personal approach opens a window on the American past and lets us feel it like nothing else around.” (NPR) The son of folk revivalists Peter and Mary Alice Amidon, he was raised on the sounds of pre-war America, which he has refracted beautifully through his music sensibility and collaborations with Nico Muhly, Thomas Bartlett, tUnE-yArDs, and more.