MERCURY Prize nominee and folk experimentalist Sam Lee & Friends will play Selby Town Hall on September 1.

“The first time I saw Sam perform was during the Mercury ceremony back in 2012, and I was utterly transfixed” says Chris Jones, Selby Town Council's arts officer. “I was beguiled by the sound: it was unlike any folk music I’d heard before, steeped in history but also fresh, innovative and invigorating with the most fascinating instrumentation.

"I think he’s a genuine breath of fresh air in English folk, a really intriguing pioneer, so I’m really delighted that, after many attempts, we’ve finally managed to secure a date with Sam and his band."

Looking forward to Saturday's debut appearance, Chris adds: "This is a show which should appeal to anyone with a deep interest in where music comes from and how we interpret it, as well as lovers of all round brilliant playing. It’s bound to be a real treat.”

Lee's untraditional path to being a traditional English folk singer has taken him from North London and studying at Chelsea School of Art to working as a forager and wilderness expert while moonlighting as a burlesque dancer, until a chance encounter led to the door of the great Scottish traveller singer Stanley Robertson.

Lee undertook an extraordinary four-year apprenticeship into the arcane, living world of traditional song that few outside the traveller and gypsy communities have ever experienced. He duly became the musical "next of kin" and inheritor of Robertson’s vast repertoire of songs and an ancient, idiosyncratic traveller singing craft, and he now spends much time researching and documenting the music and stories of the Romany gypsy and Irish traveller communities.

Since bursting on to the folk scene in the Noughties, Lee also has been the driving force behind the The Nest Collective, a folk club that has brought traditional music to new stages and venues, as well as being the founder of a blossoming song collectors’ movement that inspires a new generation of performers to draw on living source singers, rather than books and records.

Lee collects new versions of old songs on his mobile phone and laptop, but his repertoire is steeped in the reek and smoke of folk history and lore, its tales of love, parting, exile and murder. Regarded as a provocateur by some, a pioneer by others, he is carving a new acoustic sound in collaboration with his band, with unprecedented instrumentation, set in unconventional and contemporary arrangements.

Tickets for September 1's 8pm concert are on sale at £14 at selbytownhall.co.uk or on 01757 708449 or £16 on the door from 7.30pm.