Category: Big Ears

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Big Ears 2024, Part 1

Looking back at the list of artists I wrote about in advance of the 2023 Big Ears Festival, I’m reminded of what an amazing yet indeterminate musical adventure the whole experience is. Not everyone I wrote about ended up playing; I wasn’t able to get to the performances of all of the artists I mentioned; and not all of the shows I made it to lived up to my hopes. Still, there were plenty of shows that exceeded my expectations.

Of the artists I wrote about last year, two whose shows I saw and that I would strongly recommend seeing (or listening to) are Kali Malone and Tarta Relena. With the audience seated and surrounded by speakers, Kali Malone performed an extended drone work at the Knoxville Museum of Art, while Catalan folk duo Tarta Relena held a full crowd entranced with their ancient-meets-modern, vocals-and-laptop performance at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral.

But enough of Big Ears 2023. The lineup for 2024 has been announced, and while there will no doubt be adds and drops between now and March, I’m going to give occasional shoutouts to artists I’m hoping to see perform.

First up is Bitchin’ Bajas, a Chicago-based trio that combines overlapping, repetitive motifs with polyrhythmic complexity, hazy psychedelic grooves and more ambient-like explorations of tone and texture. Their Bandcamp page notes that parts of the piece below, “Amorpha,” were created with Laurie Spiegel’s Music Mouse software.

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Sounds of Big Ears ’23: Lesley Flanigan, Xylouris White

I’ve been studying up for the Big Ears Festival, listening to a 96-hour playlist my friend Will has amassed in preparation for our March trip to Knoxville, Tennessee. And while I’ll never get through the full list, I can at least sample enough music to pick out a few highlights — which I’ve already been doing on this blog (here and here in posts highlighting Ichiko Aoba, Bing and Ruth, Caroline, Catherine Lamb, Kali Malone and Tarta Relena).

Two more artists I’m hoping to see: Lesley Flanigan and Xylouris White.

Lesley Flanigan – I can only assume that Flanigan, a New York-based experimental musician who makes her own instruments, is still making music, but the latest two releases on both her Bandcamp and Spotify pages are Hedera from 2016 and Glacier from 2014. The 20-minute “Hedera” juxtaposes a steady, driving percussive sound against layered, ethereal female vocals. “Can Barely Feel My Feet” builds on a foundation of vocals while also exploring drone, microtonality and shimmering electronics.

For more mainstream-oriented audiences, “Shattering” from the 2014 release Glacier will be a more accessible distillation of Flanigan’s ideas, also building up from layered vocals but offering the additional entry points of lyrics and a clear melody. What will she sound like in 2023? I have no idea, but I’ve heard enough from these two releases to know that I want to find out.

Xylouris White – Lesley Flanigan has fewer than 200 monthly listeners on Spotify; Xylouris White has just under 1,200. It’s a testament to the philosophy of Big Ears that the festival opens its doors to artists with such small followings alongside artists with hundreds of thousands or even millions of listeners. Lead with quality, and the listeners will show up.

Xylouris White is a duo consisting of George Xylouris, a Greek singer and laouto player (the laouto is a stringed instrument that is part of the lute family), and drummer Jim White of the Dirty Three. The music — which includes both original compositions and Cretan folk music — ranges from melancholic, traditional-sounding ballads to propulsive, rhythmically complex tunes that evoke experimental jazz. Xylouris is a powerful singer with wide emotional range, and his laouto playing similarly runs the gamut from gentle, refined plucking to manic strumming. White is a versatile and intuitive percussionist, matching Xylouris’ mood at every turn and adding not just rhythm to the equation, but also tonal color.

The beauty of this music is in how well Xylouris and White complement each other, how much emotion and energy they both bring to the music, and how it can sound both deeply traditional and fiercely fresh — sometimes alternating between the two, other times simultaneously.

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Sounds of Big Ears, Part 2

The Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee, is coming up next spring. I was a latecomer to the festival, attending for the first time in 2019. Having been once, though, I vowed to myself that I will try to attend every year.

This is the second in an occasional series of posts on artists I am looking forward to hearing.

Bing & Ruth – “Nearer” is one of two solo piano works from the 2022 release Species. It’s an intimate, four-minute work that speaks with a profundity that only solo piano can, with each chord making a statement, while its resonating aftermath offers a moment of contemplation about what that statement might mean.

Catherine Lamb – One of the thrills of new music is challenging yourself. Enter Catherine Lamb and her microtonal drone works. They’re the kind of pieces that could send an unsuspecting audience member to the exit, muttering that what they’re hearing isn’t “music” because it doesn’t have a clear beat or a discernible melody. They’re also the kind of pieces that reward an open mind and patient listening, as layers upon layers of elongated notes shift subtly in timbre and intonation as they move toward, away from and against each other, creating a complex web of harmony and dissonance.
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Sounds of Big Ears ’23

This coming March will mark my third time at the Big Ears festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you’ve been there yourself, then you know it’s a one-of-a-kind musical experience — an almost overwhelming lineup of world-class artists covering every genre from drone to indie rock to jazz to contemporary classical to Americana, along with plenty of styles that fall between the lines. Among the artists I saw this year were Low, Arooj Aftab, Caroline Shaw and So Percussion, 75 Dollar Bill, Sarah Davachi, Kronos Quartet, Efterklang, Leyla McCalla, and Myra Melford.

The 2023 lineup promises to be amazing, too. Here are just a few of the artists I’m looking forward to hearing.

Tarta Relena – I’m basically throwing out the “instrumental” playbook for this blog entry. Tarta Relena is a vocal duo from Barcelona that updates Catalonian folk melodies with gorgeous, mesmerizing arrangements.

Ichiko Aoba – Japanese singer-songwriter who plays guitar, piano, clarinet, accordion and flute.

Kali Malone – Minimalist compositions for pipe organ, choir, chamber ensembles, as well as electroacoustic formats.

Caroline – Fragile pieces that exist somewhere in the space between indie, Americana and postrock.