Eight venues, hundreds of attendees, four days, one city.
The most unassuming music festival took Knoxville by storm this weekend. If you didn’t notice Big Ears Festival 2016 was underway downtown, then you wouldn’t be alone.
However, don’t take this to mean Big Ears was insignificant; it’s actually one of avant-garde music’s most celebrated festivals. Internationally renowned musicians filled our scruffy little city, and hundreds of music-hungry fans flocked to the various theaters and venues downtown to get their fill of anything and everything off the wall in music.
From the zen and hypnotic Lou Reed’s Drones to Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith’s polished and awe-inspiring Bijou Theatre collaboration, Big Ears offered something for everyone – and something for everyone to try.
The First Annual Big Ears Indie Poetry slam brought the festival to the public with open admission in the Square Room, and the Drones jam Friday night allowed any musician — no matter their skill level — to play with a rock star.
Big Ears evoked every emotion, from joy and connectedness at Drew Drake’s poetry and song performance to angst and passion at Circuit des Yeux’s Standard appearance.
As any festival should, Big Ears went out with a bang — a bang that took the form of soft percussion in the woods. Ijams Nature Center hosted Inuksuit, a percussive piece played by tens of musicians dispersed throughout the woods. Each musician played a small part of the symphony that developed across the rock quarry.
While this performance was a spiritual journey in itself, the literal physical journey to Ijams heightened the sense of stepping into another, more mystical world. As cars lined up to a standstill on the two-lane road to the nature center, attendees began pulling off to park and walk the remaining half mile to the quarry site.
This pilgrimage to the meditative, musical forest captured the spirit of Big Ears.
Placing a festival in the middle of a city did nothing to kill the community spirit which forms at these events. Waiting in line was never an ordeal and more often it turned into a meet and greet with fellow music lovers.
For more detail on what the weekend had to offer, go to utdailybeacon.com to read full reviews of artist performances and a Q&A with festival founder Ashley Capps.
For a podcast featuring Public Cinema’s co-founder Darren Hughes, who details Big Ears partnership, click here.
La Terza Classe plays for the Big Ears Festival on Saturday April 2nd, 2016.
