British folk rocker Richard Thompson, who was named one of the top 20 guitarists of all time by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003, will perform at Prescott Park in Portsmouth on Friday, Aug. 27, as part of the Prescott Park Arts Festival.

Among other accolades, Thompson has received a lifetime achievement award from the BBC and won the Orville H. Gibson award for best acoustic guitar player in 1991. He held the role of artistic director of the 17th Meltdown Festival in the UK in June, succeeding such notable artists asDavid Bowie, Patti Smith, Massive Attack and Ornette Coleman. He became known for his work with Fairpoint Convention in the 1960s, but his songs have also been recorded by the likes of Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne and Elvis Costello.

In Portsmouth, the acclaimed guitarist will be promoting his new album “Dream Attic,” which will be released Aug. 31. It was recorded live in February during a tour of the West Coast, mostly at three shows at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. The disc also features Pete Zorn on guitar, flute, saxophone and mandolin; Michael Jerome on percussion; Taras Prodaniuk on bass; and Joel Zifkin on violin and mandolin.

“The thing about recording live is that you lose accuracy but you gain energy; you lose choices but you gain immediacy,” Thompson said in a press release.

With a career spanning more than 40 years, it’s not surprising that Thompson would want to release an album highlighting the concepts of recharging his music and intimacy with listeners. He noted that the tour chronicled in “Dream Attic” felt similar to Fairport Convention’s first tour of the United States in the 1970s.

Thompson has a uniquely diverse style of playing guitar. He uses hybrid picking techniques, playing bass and rhythm with a pick and finger-picking the other strings for melody and punctuation. He uses electric and acoustic guitars to produce a sound that is at times clean and lyrical, and at others punchy and more distorted. His voice and guitar work bridge the genres of folk and rock.

With “Dream Attic,” Thompson and company successfully blend an array of traditional strings and woodwinds with modern electric guitar in a manner that is engaging and panoramic, often building from slower, more lyrical sections in which folk influences are evident, to faster, rock-driven and often quirky segments.

“Dream Attic” delivers a fusion of lamenting and dramatic yet powerful songs such as “Burning Man,” with punchier, up-tempo rock tunes like “Money Shuffle,” a satire of Wall Street. Other tunes, such as “Haul Me Up,” are reminiscent of Johnny Cash’s style.” “Big Sun Falling in the River” has an almost funky feel at the beginning, while “Sidney Wells,” a modernized crime scene ballad, features a rolling rhythm section and blaring but not overpowering saxophone solos, complementing a lengthy guitar solo that is equally intense and forceful. The intro to “A Brother Slips Away,” a tribute to Thompson’s lost friends, is downright bluesy, leading into a tune that has an almost gospel air to its chorus.

The show at Prescott Park—the final installment of the River House Restaurant Concert Series, begins at 7 p.m. on Aug. 27 in the park on Marcy Street. Suggested donations of $8 will be collected at the gate.