THE outdoors will be brought indoors as Mercury Prize nominated folk star Sam Lee brings his acclaimed Singing With Nightingales to The Met.

The performance will combine music and storytelling with a live stream from the woods, where the male birds sing their courtship song.

Among the guest artists will be Wild Nightingales.

The concert is produced by the folk/world roots music promoter, The Nest Collective, who have been holding Singing with Nightingales events in the woodlands of south east England since 2015, which will be taking place again this spring in Kent and Sussex.

This year for the first time, the stage show will tour the UK, bringing the outdoors indoors.

For the low-lit event, Sam Lee will be joined on stage by Jarlath Henderson and Kate Young, for what is described as a "utterly unique collaboration".

They’ll communicate via a live link, with an ornithologist who’ll guide us through the woodland, into one of the UK’s last remaining strongholds of the fast-disappearing bird, said to possess one of Nature’s finest voices.

Sam Lee said: "The song of the nightingale has been captivating human hearts and firing imaginations since ancient times but the numbers visiting Britain are in decline, and it is very rare to hear them now even in the countryside.

"Yet by combining stories, music and folklore with a live broadcast from wild starlit woods, we can conjure a journey to where the nightingale nests, so that audience can experience the timeless magic of nightingale song in ear-tingling proximity and let them listen in in on the rarest of concerts — human musicians dueting with a superb songbird."

Singing With Nightingales: Live is part of the RSPB Festival of Nightingales and is supported by Arts Council England.

Tickets for the May 3 performance cost £16 and can be booked from The Met via https://themet.org.uk or by calling 0161 761 2216.