Sam Amidon
Amidon tours extensively throughout the US & Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan, and has appeared at festivals such as End of the Road, Green Man, Roskilde, Lowlands, Pickathon, Solid Sound, Big Ears, Celebrate Brooklyn, The Sydney Festival, the Jaipur Literature Festival, and others. He has become known for freewheeling concert performances, often with Vatalaro and Ismaily.
In 2007 he premiered Muhly's The Only Tune at Carnegie Hall as part of John Adams's In Your Ear festival. He has performed the piece at London’s Roundhouse and Barbican, as well as at Cork’s Safe Harbour festival in collaboration with the Crash Ensemble. Writing about the recorded version of The Only Tune, which appeared on Muhly’s 2008 album Mothertongue, Greil Marcus said, "It’s incalculably spooky, the way the action comes out of nowhere, the way Amidon has prepared you to expect nothing."
Between 2002 and 2006, Amidon devised a multimedia program called "Home Alone Inside My Head," consisting of "self-inflicted field recordings," drawn comics, short videos, storytelling and improvisation. He excerpted the project online and performed it in full at experimental music and art spaces around New York City and Brooklyn and beyond, including NYC’s The Kitchen and MAD Museum, Monkeytown in Brooklyn, the AVA gallery on NYC’s Lower East Side, Cincinnati’s CAC, the Kuhturm Gallery in Leipzig, and MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA.
Amidon has performed as part of the Bedroom Community Whale Watching Tour at The Barbican and Reykjavik’s Harpa concert hall. He has also appeared in 2015 and 2016 at the Bon Iver-curated Eaux Claires festival in Wisconsin, performing his own music and appearing onstage as guest vocalist with Bon Iver, Richard Reed Parry, and parading the grounds of the festival leading a pop-up "Guitarkestra." In September 2016, Amidon hosted a multi-artist tribute to Pete Seeger at Ireland’s National Concert Hall in Dublin, featuring Irish and American artists such as Tommy Sands, Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, The Voice Squad, Bell X1 and others. Amidon has done collaborative concerts and mini-tours with artists such as Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Jason Moran, and Marc Ribot. In February 2017 he toured as soloist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Pekka Kuusisto, including performances at the Sydney Opera House, Sydney Recital Hall, and concerts throughout the country. In 2020 he played at the first edition of the Monheim Triennale.
