Every year, the giants of tons of different experimental and avant-garde music worlds descend upon Knoxville for the Big Ears Festival. The people behind Big Ears just unveiled the lineup for next year's edition, which includes a ton of legends, covering a wide spectrum. Notable elders on this ridiculously stacked bill include David Byrne, Robert Plant, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Pat Metheny, Dirty Three, Richard Thompson, Harry Allen, Tunde Adebimpe, John Scofield, Alan Sparhawk, Marc Ribot, Saul Williams Don Was, Deerhoof, Pino Palladino, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the Chicago Underground Duo. The festival also makes room for newer heavyweights like Flying Lotus, MJ Lenderman, Perfume Genius, Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band, Model/Actriz, YHWH Nailgun, Los Thuthanaka, Lucrecia Dalt, Maria Somerville, Florist, Hand Habits, Hayden Pedigo, Tom Skinner, and SG Goodman. Looks great!
Big Ears, which goes down March 26-29 at venues around Knoxville, always features tons of special one-off presentations. Some of these acts are simply bringing their tours through. David Byrne, for example, will give a couple of performances of his Who Is The Sky? show. But others are doing things that they won't do anywhere else at the festival. Downtown experimental jazz icon John Zorn, for instance, is presenting twelve different works, all of them new to the festival, including Love Songs with Petra Haden and Awakening Ground with John Medeski and former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo. Another Zorn piece is a collaboration with fellow avant-garde icon Laurie Anderson. Anderson will also team up with Sexmob to debut X2, the follow-up to the piece that she premiered at last year's Big Ears.
Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny will play with his group Pat Metheny’s Side-Eye III+, while Low's Alan Sparhawk will perform with his recent collaborators Trampled By Turtles. Polish composer Hania Rani will join the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for the North American premiere of her piece Non-Fiction. The LA collective Wild Up will perform Julius Eastman’s Femenine and Arthur Russell’s 24 To 24, and the Ghost Train Orchestra will pay tribute to Moondog. Tim Heidecker will perform with his Very Good Band, and the bill also includes fellow comedians Neil Hamburger and Reggie Watts. I'm really only scratching the surface. You can find all the details here.
