PUTNEY — Twilight Music and Next Stage Arts continue the 23rd season of Twilight on the Tavern Lawn with an evening of exploratory folk, free improvisation, and ambient soundscapes featuring High and Loathsome on Sunday, June 14, at 6 p.m. on the Putney Tavern lawn, 133 Main Street.
The concert is free and open to the public. Audience members are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or blankets. In the event of rain, the performance will move indoors to Next Stage Arts, 15 Kimball Hill. Food will be available on site. RSVPs are encouraged at nextstagearts.org.
High and Loathsome is a quartet that drifts fluidly between song and improvisation, balancing structure with atmosphere and spontaneity with intention. Drawing on decades of experience as musicians, composers, and sonic explorers, the group creates music that feels both grounded and searching.
The band brings together Michael Roberts — founder of Wooden Dinosaur and leader of The Rear Defrosters — with drummer and educator Stefan Amidon, bassist and sound engineer Max Adam, and experimental musician John Levin, a longtime force in Brattleboro’s creative music scene.
High and Loathsome first formed in the summer of 2025 to record songs Roberts had written while living and traveling in East and North Africa. What began as a straightforward recording project soon evolved into a more expansive collaboration. In the hands of Amidon, Adam, and Levin, the songs opened into passages of minimalism, free improvisation, and richly textured soundscapes before circling back to familiar forms.
Inspired as much by the earthy intimacy of Michael Hurley as by the exploratory spirit of Miles Davis, the quartet creates performances that unfold organically, moving between folk song, ambient texture, and experimental interplay.
Twilight on the Tavern Lawn is a summer concert series featuring folk, world, jazz, zydeco, bluegrass, pop, and Americana music. Concerts take place every other Sunday through Aug. 23 at 6 p.m. on the Putney Tavern lawn in downtown Putney. The series is presented by Twilight Music and Next Stage Arts with support from the Town of Putney and local businesses and organizations. Donations are welcome.
