Sam Amidon's 7" vinyl record Fatal Flower Garden EP (A Tribute to Harry Smith) is out now on Nonesuch. On the EP, Amidon performs four songs from Anthology of American Folk Music, Smith’s beloved and influential 1920s and ’30s folk music recordings. Amidon and frequent collaborator Shahzad Ismaily play all the instruments; Leo Abrahams engineered, produced, and mixed. Amidon concludes a UK tour in the week ahead, then tours the US Northeast.
Amidon first publicly performed the songs on this EP—all of which were on Smith’s beloved and influential Anthology of American Folk Music—for a concert commissioned by Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, Belgium, as part of its large-scale Anthology tribute. Fatal Flower Garden was recorded over two days in East London with Amidon and frequent collaborator Shahzad Ismaily playing all the instruments; Leo Abrahams engineered, produced, and mixed.
Amidon concludes a UK tour with shows in Basingstoke, Bristol, and Frome, in the week ahead, then comes to the United States to tour the Northeast. For details and tickets, see below and visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Amidon says: “Fatal Flower Garden is my tribute to the elusive spirit of Harry Smith and to his wondrous Anthology of American Folk Music. Harry Smith believed in the secret connections and mysteries that existed in culture ... whether it was the feeling of Thelonious Monk’s rhythmic phrasing; the patterns in string games and Ukrainian egg painting designs; the wild fiddle tunes; or the epic folk ballads. He understood American Folk Music to be a wildly heterogeneous category that included multiple cultural, racial, and linguistic elements.”
He continues, “I love listening through the Anthology for its window in to 1920s musical practices in all their varied glory, but also for the silent consciousness of Harry Smith behind the whole thing. You can picture him listening to the recordings, expounding his theories about the connections between them, and digging all of it.”
Fatal Flower Garden is Amidon’s fourth recording on Nonesuch and follows 2017’s The Following Mountain. He also was one of four singer/songwriter’s featured on Kronos Quartet’s 2017 Folk Songs for the label.
Amidon first publicly performed the songs on this EP—all of which were on Smith’s beloved and influential Anthology of American Folk Music—for a concert commissioned by Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, Belgium, as part of its large-scale Anthology tribute. Fatal Flower Garden was recorded over two days in East London with Amidon and frequent collaborator Shahzad Ismaily playing all the instruments; Leo Abrahams engineered, produced, and mixed.
Amidon concludes a UK tour with shows in Basingstoke, Bristol, and Frome, in the week ahead, then comes to the United States to tour the Northeast. For details and tickets, see below and visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Amidon says: “Fatal Flower Garden is my tribute to the elusive spirit of Harry Smith and to his wondrous Anthology of American Folk Music. Harry Smith believed in the secret connections and mysteries that existed in culture ... whether it was the feeling of Thelonious Monk’s rhythmic phrasing; the patterns in string games and Ukrainian egg painting designs; the wild fiddle tunes; or the epic folk ballads. He understood American Folk Music to be a wildly heterogeneous category that included multiple cultural, racial, and linguistic elements.”
He continues, “I love listening through the Anthology for its window in to 1920s musical practices in all their varied glory, but also for the silent consciousness of Harry Smith behind the whole thing. You can picture him listening to the recordings, expounding his theories about the connections between them, and digging all of it.”
Fatal Flower Garden is Amidon’s fourth recording on Nonesuch and follows 2017’s The Following Mountain. He also was one of four singer/songwriter’s featured on Kronos Quartet’s 2017 Folk Songs for the label.
Amidon first publicly performed the songs on this EP—all of which were on Smith’s beloved and influential Anthology of American Folk Music—for a concert commissioned by Ancienne Belgique in Brussels, Belgium, as part of its large-scale Anthology tribute. Fatal Flower Garden was recorded over two days in East London with Amidon and frequent collaborator Shahzad Ismaily playing all the instruments; Leo Abrahams engineered, produced, and mixed.
Amidon concludes a UK tour with shows in Basingstoke, Bristol, and Frome, in the week ahead, then comes to the United States to tour the Northeast. For details and tickets, see below and visit nonesuch.com/on-tour.
Amidon says: “Fatal Flower Garden is my tribute to the elusive spirit of Harry Smith and to his wondrous Anthology of American Folk Music. Harry Smith believed in the secret connections and mysteries that existed in culture ... whether it was the feeling of Thelonious Monk’s rhythmic phrasing; the patterns in string games and Ukrainian egg painting designs; the wild fiddle tunes; or the epic folk ballads. He understood American Folk Music to be a wildly heterogeneous category that included multiple cultural, racial, and linguistic elements.”
He continues, “I love listening through the Anthology for its window in to 1920s musical practices in all their varied glory, but also for the silent consciousness of Harry Smith behind the whole thing. You can picture him listening to the recordings, expounding his theories about the connections between them, and digging all of it.”
Fatal Flower Garden is Amidon’s fourth recording on Nonesuch and follows 2017’s The Following Mountain. He also was one of four singer/songwriter’s featured on Kronos Quartet’s 2017 Folk Songs for the label.
Nonesuch Records releases a fifteenth anniversary edition of Carolina Chocolate Drops' 2010 Grammy Award-winning album Genuine Negro Jig on January 23, 2026. The reissue, featuring founding band members Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, and Justin Robinson, includes the original Joe Henry–produced album and nine bonus tracks: seven previously unreleased tracks plus a 2025 remaster of “City of Refuge” and a 2025 mix of “Memphis Shakedown.” This release marks the album’s first time on vinyl since its original pressing in 2010. You can hear the bonus track "Here Rattler" now.
Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s fifth full-length LP, a new, all-orchestral album Forward Into Light, produced by Silas Brown and recorded by Metropolis Ensemble led by artistic director/conductor Andrew Cyr, is due February 27 on New Amsterdam / Nonesuch Records. It features Forward Into Light, inspired by the American women’s suffrage movement; the string orchestra and harp (Noël Wan) version of Drink the Wild Ayre; Eye of Mnemosyne, a work on memory, innovation, and culture; and Something for the Dark, a meditation on resilience. Snider says: “I chose to create an album of these four works because they share themes of perseverance, alliance, and evolution through dark and light—concepts that have been at the forefront of my mind in recent years."
