BIG EARS 2022: Zorn, Shabaka, Low, Arooj Aftab, Annette Peacock, Dawn Richard, Nubya Garcia, L'Rain, Damon Locks, Lido Pimienta, more more more!

very tempted to go to this

Just for fun, I took the artist list for this and plugged it into the system I use for genre-modeling at Spotify, as if Big Ears were a genre and the 2022 lineup were its most representative artists. Here's a playlist of most of those artists and a bunch of other ones that the same fans tend to like, ordered by collective relevance:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/05P0AnKQosf05ENEVQEMDw?si=65c587a844c249a0

:)

I want to point out that Brian Howe wrote most of the blurbs on the site, and having ONE writer do it really creates a cohesive experience when navigating something built on music discovery

That sounds right

very tempted to go to this

Motherfucker

Early Bird gone already and the day isn't even over...

Boring where are you getting your intel

lol by the time I have enough money for a ticket they'l be sold out

Well, I just bought em

I wasn’t expecting Early Bird to jump to $100 for two tix in a matter of hours >:(

Boring?

Big Ears emails only. Their latest email said the pre sales for donors and those who had tickets for 2020 snatched up a lot of the total available tickets.

FYI I only donated $50 but that was enough to allow me in the pre-sale.

ahhhhh thanks

Pardon the street teaming, but a few more artists announced, in particular Patti Smith. (She was supposed to be at the canceled '20 fest.) Solo sets by Lage and Medeski, other interesting stuff.

https://bigearsfestival.org/big-ears-announces-second-wave-artist-additions/

ok haven’t posted here in like five years but I am incredibly excited about this lineup. like, beyond amped.

I bet some of y’all who’ve attended previously will know: if I stay outside of town, is parking near-downtown doable? And how likely am I to get shut out of performances if my ticket is GA?

I only got shut out of tiny places like the Pilot Light, but then again I had the mid-level Premier tickets.

Yeah, the only places it seems to be a problem are the small venues. I think Wolf Eyes shut down the Standard

You can definitely park downtown, especially in March. There are a lot of garages. I've found the shut-out thing variable, there are definitely shows that if you really want to be at, you want to get there early (even if it means skipping something else). You can usually tell by looking at the schedule which shows in any given slot are going to be the big draws.

A bunch of downtown parking garages are free in the evenings and on weekends: https://www.downtownknoxville.org/explore/parking/?t%5B%5D=96&view=map&q=&_=1635304005563&ajaxcall=1635304017

Your best choice is probably the State St. Garage which is one block from the TN Theater and two from the Bijou Theater: https://www.downtownknoxville.org/state-street-garage/

Yeah, any of the public garages, if you wait until after 8 or so to leave you don't have to pay at all (even if you park there in the morning/all day).

I'm vaxxed and boosted... Any advice on how not to get Omicron at Big Ears?

zorb ball

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0280/1473/9549/products/89223_ziploc_gallon_storage_bags_1_800x.jpg?v=1576176350

N95 mask at all venues, avoid the UT campus? Eat in your hotel room?

For a moment I thought this was the campaigning thread haha

I wouldn't worry about it. By the end of March there will probably be a new strain.

http://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GettyImages-89266817.jpg

Speaking from on the ground in Knoxville, I'd say it's possible Omicron is gonna burn through here like a forest fire. It may be long since peaked by the end of March. On the downside, the state Legislature has made it literally illegal to require vaccination to enter a venue — BUT they can require a negative test, and accept a vaxx card as a substitute. So dumb.

This thing is 10 weeks away, what are our odds

i have these same questions

so say we all

Think positive

Schedule is here...

https://bigearsfestival.org/festival-schedule/

I'm not even past Thursday and it looks impossible

https://bigearsfestival.org/festival-schedule/

i say this every year but i really need to go one of these days.

lol at scheduling the sparks and low shows where they overlap, there will be tears

As much as I love the music, my legs and back are too old for the hard hustle of getting from venue to venue and the no-seating venues, not to mention the impossible choices of multiple programming tracks.

Yo, especially after covid! I went to one show in the space between Delta and Omicron after a year or w/e of lockdown and my back was like FUUUUCK YOOOUU

Yo, especially after covid! I went to one show in the space between Delta and Omicron after a year or w/e of lockdown and my back was like FUUUUCK YOOOUU

i am trying to get back to jogging at least partially so that i can toughen my feet up so that i can be out nights

lol at scheduling the sparks and low shows where they overlap, there will be tears

think I gotta go w low

my question is, do they kick ppl out of the venues between shows? or can I hang out and get a good spot for the next one

jeff parker against sons of kemet, honestly rude imo

still so excited tho

can't wait for the day when I can just ship someone my entire head to take along with them and then just get it fedexed straight back to me afterwards before the memories start leaching out

Thursday and Friday are just way too loaded and Sunday is pretty sparse I know they gotta work around artists’ schedules but they should try to even it out.

my question is, do they kick ppl out of the venues between shows? or can I hang out and get a good spot for the next one

They clear the venues iirc.

ugh

I have fewer terrible conflicts than I was afraid of, partly because of some people playing more than once. But there will be hard choices, plus yes the physical limits of what one can endure. (One trick for me is to work in shows at the Bijou or Tennessee, which are seated, between the standing venues when possible.)

I just sprung for the VIP tickets cause I haven’t gone anywhere in two years.

Sunday
Sarah Davachi
Theo Blackmann and Joe Branciaforte
Bill Frisell
Odean Pope and Immanuel Wilkins (so good)
A Thousand Thoughts with Kronos Quartet
Yves Tumor (a small bit, was disappointed, like the hair metal aesthetic though)

Saturday: was too exhausted to see much
Sarah Davachi, organ
John Zorn, organ

Sunday:
Sarah Davachi
Chaos Magick
Odean Pope & Immanuel Wilkins
Bang On A Can All-Stars

I stopped in for some of that Kronos Quartet "live documentary" because I had time between Ambrose Akinmusire and Zorn, not expecting anything in particular, and thought it was actually a cool and interesting concept, well executed.

Also as local resident I will try to organize at least an ILX happy hour next year. Had it in mind this year but failed to follow through.

Someone said to me that you could do the whole fest over again and see completely different bands and still have a good time and he’s so right

Oh yeah, some of my friends saw almost an entirely different festival from me, and there's a ton of stuff I wish I'd seen.

Absolutely magical weekend. We'd been talking about going to Big Ears for years and finally decided to go for it since we were going to have to do a bit of a road trip to see Sparks on this tour in any case. Really going to try to make it an annual thing from now on. Here's everything I saw:

Annette Peacock
Attacca Quartet
Aurora Nealand & The Royal Roses
Bang on a Can All-Stars: The Pandemic Solos
Bang on a Can All-Stars: Terry Riley's Autodreamographical Tales
Circus No. 9
Electric Appalachia (William Tyler & Mary Lattimore)
Ellen Reid Soundwalk Ensemble
Evan Ziporyn
Eve Maret
James McVinnie
Joseph Branciforte & Theo Bleckmann
Kronos Quartet: Terry Riley's Cadenza on the Night Plain
Kronos Quartet: A Thousand Thoughts
Lakou Mizik
Leyla McCalla
Maeve Gilchrist
Meredith Monk & Bang on a Can All-Stars: Memory Game
Nathalie Joachim
Nathalie Joachim & Spektral Quartet
Preservation Hall Jazz Band
Sarah Davachi
Sparks
Sporty’s Brass Band

Mrs. VTC and I thank you for the Tern Club recommendation, tipsy -- very much our thing! Knoxville is cool.

Oh good, glad you had a good time and liked the Tern Club. Those are good folks, I love that place.

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/2022/03/29/big-ears-festival-2022-returns-memorable-sights-sounds-knoxville/7167776001/

Atlanta paper also covered the event

https://www.ajc.com/life/arts-culture/big-ears-festival-in-knoxville-brings-edgy-music-to-enthusiastic-crowd/J6BVMH6ZD5C5TAJZEWWFATKPHQ/

The SPIN writeup is funny because there's a lot of grousing about what a comped journalist VIP badge can and cannot get you, to which I'd say, "know your audience" but SPIN doesn't exactly have an audience in 2022

And the entrance and seating coordition was inconsistent venue to venue, at least for us critics. (At one show, my credentials allowed me to access the VIP section; at the next, I’d wait in the VIP line, only to be rerouted to the Premier, and then denied VIP seating. I overhead other people, both press and non-, vent similar frustrations. Overall, not enough to warrant any real complaints — but hopefully 2023 will run a bit more smoothly.)

really bummed i missed all of sunday's zorn :(

overall an outstanding time, though! will be back next year

According to that article with Ashley Capps there were 30% more attendees this year than 2019.

I suspected as much! I wasn't sure if I was just being overly conscious of crowd sizes after the pandemic or if there were actually way more people there

Yeah this was the first year of a complete sell-out. There weren't even any day tickets left.

the ppl were ready

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/big-ears-festival/recap-arooj-aftab-joe-henry-caroline-shaw/?fbclid=IwAR1G0KOmaKcwkSz-3258FdqAmi6P6EoHFvdOKcBgsLkNpSCCkPHKdzFrWi8

Geoff Himes writeup in Paste

Himes makes big pronouncements-

re Jason Moran--

The 47-year-old pianist, perhaps the best jazz artist of his generation,

And the central paradoxes of our lives—the tension between creation and destruction, between hope and loss—are never fully resolved, and we can always use new approaches to the same old problems.
Every year, the Big Ears Festival provides a useful arena for reconsidering these issues.

Immanuel Wilkins, the alto saxophonist who is justly being hailed as the best young jazz artist of the decade

I'll suggest "a useful arena for reconsidering the central paradoxes of our lives" as the festival's new tagline.

Good idea. Ha.

Just reading author N*d S*blette in an email talk about his faves at the fest. He was there showing his work in progress movie "Tierra Sagrada (Sacred Ground)" about religious Cuban singing and dancing rituals. His faves were:

Miguel Zenón with the Spektral Quartet; Val Jeanty; and Jason Moran

I saw about 15-20 minutes of the movie, taking a breather between other things. It was cool. I also saw some of Val Jeanty, who was also cool. I heard raves about Zenon. (And Moran, I mean, of course.)

Dude the Moran set got absolutely batshit. He started just playing this low piano noise rumble that turned into a sucking abyss somehow?

I didn't make it to Moran, which I hated to miss. The two sets I saw by him a few years back (including w/Milford Graves!) were amazing.

This festival sounds amazing.

just got my pass for next year :)

got mine too

Thread for next year's:

Big Ears 2023