Youstroll through Knoxville, Tenn.’s cozy downtown square and glance at your phone’sinteractive schedule map: “What’s on the itinerary for tonight?” you may think.“An avant-garde a cappellacomposition?A solo virtuoso banjo player in a regal Episcopal church? A psychedelicjazz-fusion trio? An artful electronic piece beaming through a theater?”
Inan era when most festivals are unsubtly tweaked copies of each other, thecountry’s edgiest music event continues to push boundaries, to challenge yourpreconceptions. One decade after its modest initial launch, Big Ears remains acultural utopia—a space that, based on the current market, shouldn’t exist as acommercial entity. While most fests repeatedly opt for the safest lineupsimaginable, AC Entertainment founder Ashley Capps is embracing theexperimental. Anything is possible at Big Ears, and that’s basically the reasonit exists. Very few artists at the three-day 2019 event were household names—eventhose from the stable of venerable ECM Records, which celebrated its 50thanniversary with the label’s largest-ever U.S. showcase.
Towardthe top of the bill were provocative free-jazz act The Art Ensemble of Chicago,vocalist/performance artist Meredith Monk (performing her airy, minimalist songcycle Cellular Songs), and pioneering fusion drummer Jack DeJohnette’slatest combo with saxophonist Ravi Coltrane (son of John and Alice) andbassist/sampler Matthew Garrison. The latter trio faced a nearly full TennesseeTheatre during their soothing Saturday set, a blend of atmospheric grooves and wickedsolos. A sense of reverence permeated every venue, regardless of the artist’sprofile—whether it was watching Animal Collective’s Avey Tare bathe rock clubThe Mill & Mine in ambient guitar-and-vocal drones (like “Nostalgia inLemonade”) or virtuoso vocalist Theo Bleckmann reinvent Kate Bush’s backcatalog (like an avant-punk version of “Violin”), the crowds attended becausethey were intrigued, not as an excuse to post an Instagram selfie or as atime-killer while shuffling between massive stages.
Theintimacy at Big Ears is unparalleled: All the venues are indoors, situatedthroughout Knoxville’s charming downtown, and audiences brought the sort ofrespect and admiration you’re more likely to encounter at an art gallery than adrunken rock show. (And that focus also applied to, say, space-rock adventurersSpiritualized and progressive post-punks This Is Not This Heat, both of whompacked The Mill & Mine.) The festival closed up shop with a reliably expertset from prog-grass kings the Punch Brothers, one of the most mainstream-accessibleacts in the lineup—and, ironically, the band that most clearly exemplifies BigEars ethos of boundary-smashing. But the event’s burn-this-in-your-brain momentoccurred at midnight on Friday, with a ragtag supergroup led by Mercury Revperforming an improvised jazz-noir score to the 1962 horror film Carnival ofSouls. Saxophones wailed, percussion rattled and butcher knives weredrawn—no one in the crowd had any idea what to expect from moment to moment, justlike with the festival itself. IkD
