Big Ears Festival 2016 [Knoxville, TN] -- John Luther Adams, Philip Glass, Faust, Tony Conrad, Anthony Braxton, Laurie Anderson, Zeena Parkins, Angel Olsen, Wolf Eyes, Ikue Mori, Vijay Iyer, etc etc

Thursday, March 31

Knoxville Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stephen Schick performing John Luther Adams: Become Ocean

Philip Glass, Cello Concerto No. 2, with guest cellist Maya Beiser

The Gloaming

Yo La Tengo

Andy Stott

Tony Conrad

Wolf Eyes

Xylouris White

Zeena Parkins & Tony Buck

Olivia Chaney

Mamiffer

nief-norf

Friday, April 1

Andrew Bird

Anthony Braxton Tentet

Outside the Dream Syndicate (Tony Conrad with Faust)

Nicolas Jaar

Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith

eighth blackbird & Bonnie Prince Billy

Yo La Tengo & Lambchop

Shabazz Palaces

Steven Schick

Bombino

Joe Henry

Phantom Orchard

Marc Ribot

Chris Abrahams

Molly Nillson

Saturday, April 2

Laurie Anderson & Philip Glass

Sunn 0)))

Bedroom Community 10th Anniversary: Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, Sam Amidon, & Valgeir Sigurðsson

The Necks

Kiasmos (Ólafur Arnalds & Janus Rasmussen)

Angel Olsen

Bombino

Lambchop

Anthony Braxton Trio

Faust

Mary Halverson

Hieroglyphic Being

Kamasi Washington

Circuit des Yeux

Ikue Mori

Also a new, somewhat confusing ticketing structure: http://www.bigearsfestival.com/tickets/.

Looks like it's going to be about $100 more expensive for the full weekend, but you can buy individual day passes. And separate TN Theatre passes, which gets them around the problem of having to limit festival tickets to the TN Theatre's max capacity.

Link here, but behind a paywall: http://www.knoxnews.com/knoxville/music/big-ears-2016-to-be-bigger-than-ever_64881128.

faust!!
the necks!!
anthony braxton tentet!!
buncha ppl i've seen before but like!
i do not like this new ticketing structure or prices though

Thursday through Saturday instead of Fri.-Sun.? That's kind of odd.

I was kind of hoping the lineup would be a letdown so I could skip it and focus all my 2016 energy on moving, but damn I may have to go to this.

Become Ocean = dear god I want to be able to financially and logistically go to this

Yeah I don't know what prompted the shift to Thursday. Maybe it's hard to keep people around for a Sunday finale?

too bad it's more expensive overall, i thought it would be cheaper since they're sequestering the TN theater shows? one of the things I liked was that while about 50 percent of the acts were unknown to me it was affordable enough to be explore and take chances and trust in the curation

We should start this thread again when my story with interviews with Ashley Capps and John Luther Adams that didn't break the fucking embargo posts in about 15 minutes.

I wondered why the local guys were the only ones who had anything up.

Here's a story with some actual quotes if anyone still cares:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/big-ears-2016-laurie-anderson-philip-glass-collab-part-of-epic-lineup-20151020

FAUST FAUST FAUST FAUST FAUST

I req'd Faust for the 2015 Big Ears back when they asked for audience suggestions. So excited!!!

Are Faust and Tony Conrad playing together???

Oh wait they are!!! Holy shit!

Wow so there might be a performance of Inuksuit as well as Become Ocean. Yikes! I'm afraid to look at the ticket prices everyone is lamenting

Yay! I like the look of things, although the VIP passes suggest VIP seating, which always pisses me off because it is in the front and usually half-empty.

i almost (almost) wish i were unemployed so i could go to this.

I blame Ticketmaster for the awful ticketing.

well if you were unemployed, 2 VIP tickets and four days of hotel rooms would likely run two grand so probably not a good combo.

might it be better value to get non-VIP pass and just get separate tickets to two of the big Tennessee Theatre shows?

xpost

wouldn't need hotel rooms!

anyways, it's hard to knock that lineup

Let me try...Ha

I will just have to start my own fest where Bombino is not a token act from North Africa, but one of many acts from that part of the world with that type of music. And maybe a few more jazz acts too. But I recognize that is not what the Big Ears Fest is about and that having so many impressive avante acts at one event is certainly praise-worthy.

Tickets are now on sale. With Ticketmaster fees included, the weekend pass costs $147 and the Tennessee Theater shows are $39 each.

I yield to none in my love for Philip Glass so my big-ticket show is whatever he and Laurie Anderson plan on doing. however Nico Jaar is fun AF and the Bedroom Community bit and Kiasmos and and and. I'm a little surprised they didn't put Frahm back on there since I think pretty much literally everyone else from Erased Tapes will be in the building.

re: the Thursday thing, my guess is that it has to do with that marathon they're always blocking the bridge off for on Saturday night when I stumble back to my hotel an absolute wreck.

what do VIPs get? i thought VIPs got stuff for free
anyway i think i'm gonna start with a weekend pass and then maybe decide whether or not i want to shell out more

i should start by looking at the dates again tbh

also after three stupid years I took y'all's advice and got a room at the illustrious Holiday Inn since the Oliver are being coy with reservations again and I know how that story ends

Noob question does a 'weekend pass' mean I get to see all the john Luther Adams shit incl whatever weird outdoor things they decide on, or are some of the performances premium only kind of thing?

the Become Ocean on night 1 is premium i believe

if this is who i think it is, i know you have money, cough it up

sorely tempted but i dunno if I can have that weekend off or if my gal can go or if i can pony up for flight/hotel/tix without impacting a moving budget...

where are you moving to?

nearby but out of this goddam loud ass box of sadness. i am woken every morning by airhorns at 6am.

Which is, i guess, full-circle back to Big Ears!

you live in the same building as Funkmaster Flex?

Whiney I think I'm not who you think. I wish I were, from the sound of it!!! I'm an nyc ilxor who you first met in Gainesville and I am supporting two ppl on a middling office job salary...

:D

i'm going to have to miss my dog's 13th birthday but somehow i think he'll get over that

xp i live on the corner of a busy intersection and strange acoustics mean that even on the fifth floor i can hear people across the street talking at a bus stop more or less verbatim. Every time a truck stops at the light, it's as if it's ten feet away. i've had two years of this and it's making me a bad person.

Xp I believe that constitutes a biting offense

sucks i'll probably never go to this because every other music festival is pretty stupid compared to this one

so here's a weird request. I like traveling by train; you get to drink like a fish unmolested, you can just slay books/jrpgs, my headphone game is unbeatable, and I can actually afford to get one of those sleeping cars (it's actually cheaper to take the train than the plane since I have to go through some major Midwest airport and then take a shuttle to Tyson). the trouble is that no train runs through Knoxville; I can take a relatively straight shot from SoCal to Nashville, but can't really get any closer. Does anyone who knows how to travel have any ideas for what the least obstreperous transportation option for a non-driving American to get from Nashville to Knoxville in a reasonable amount of time might be?

oh, and before I forget, if you (like me) you do end up booking a room at the Holiday Inn, they do have a special rate for Big Ears attendees. I tried calling the Oliver to try to score a reservation, but it sounds like they're going to be turning the hoi-polloi away again, so after the debacle last year I figured I'd just cut my losses.

Megabus has a Nashville -> Knoxville bus, but it'll take 12-14 hours. I've used them before, although not that particular route. If you dig travel by train, it's not all that different.

that megabus goes nashville - atlanta - knoxville. it's only 3 hours on greyhound.

There used to be a direct Knoxville-Nashville Megabus, but they dropped it. The Greyhound runs pretty often, I think, and drops off right downtown. (Not sure if it makes a lot of auxiliary stops between.)

The preliminary schedule is up on the Big Ears website. My only major conflict is between Sunn 0))) and Kamasi Washington Saturday night.

oh man geez
that is a conflict!
i haven't bought my ticket yet but i plan to ASAP

John Luther Adams/Sun Ra Arkestra/Wolf Eyes conflict is brutal!

maybe they can just all jam together?

I'm only excited for Wolf Eyes if they end up jamming w/Braxton again

http://www.bigearsfestival.com/modified-schedule-released/

they modified the schedule again. big news is that I won't have to miss the day 3 Bedroom Community showcase (which is taking place at the Tennessee now!!!!) in order to catch all of Kamasi Washington's set, which is the massive Drudge-siren for-the-love-of-God-James-don't-miss act of this whole festival IMO

this is just a little over two months away y'all, is it time to start getting excited yet

it is time to start getting excited! weighing flying there vs. driving, since gas is so cheap and I can see more America if I drive.

1pm start on thursday now!!!??

!!!!!!!

http://lineup.bigearsfestival.com/band/lou-reed-drones

yay this schedule is much better

agreed

buying my tickets this week

o/

I've got good news and bad news

bad news: i am not going to make it to knoxville this year for mostly work-related reasons. bummed that i will miss hanging out with you guys all in the same place and seeing a bunch of awesome shows too.
good news: lots of the bands i really wanted to see are playing locally including faust and the necks (among many others)!!

still -- that said, last year's silver apples show was so gd enjoyable and then they played the night i got home (the night after?) locally and the show was like 1/5 as good bc it was just simeon, no live drummer, so who knows what you guys will see that i won't! i hope next year 1) i still have a job and 2) i can take a day or two off of it to go to BE2017

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/04/f7/f0/04f7f0826b8370c16a1202c1e9955668.jpg

oh no!!

i know, it sucks
like totally sucks
i agonized and came up thinking that it was not advisable considering the current circumstances/calendar
then i bought tickets for 2/3 days of this mini festival thing with rangda, royal trux, lightning bolt, earthless, faust, a bunch of local bands i like and would see if they played seoarately + a bunch of people i'm forgetting PLUS tickets to see the necks and i felt a little better. i will still have a spring ripe with good shows even if i have to skip BE2016 :(

luck smiled upon me and I got a chance to pick up a set of those EQ filtering Here earbuds, which are supposed to ship before the end of the month; I am hoping against hope that they make it in time for my flight out bc I would LOVE to try them out in an environment like Big Ears

how are y'all approaching all the big quarter-day drone experiences? are they going to be the kind of things you can dip into, or would one be cheating themselves by not seeing the whole piece in its entirety?

Yeah, if yer talkin about the JLA/Lou Reed installations, I think you can just dip in

What's this year's ILXor headcount?

I'll be there.

Among the many things I like about Big Ears are a) great sound everywhere, and b) it's rarely so loud that I need earplugs. I needed them last year for Swans, and if Sunn wins out over Kamasi Washington, probably there, too. But otherwise, total bareback.

I have arrived, who wants to kick it

I had to cancel my trip at the last minute due to work, cry cry cry. Anyone need a weekend pass?

like, for free, to clarify. otherwise it'll just go to waste. I guess however much it would cost to overnight it to you since today is in fact wednesday.

Apparently the opening ceremony is going to be invite-only, which seems odd to me. V glad I sprang for a vip pass though as they're really trying to make it worth the money; there are meet & greets with artists (already looking forward to having a Chris Farley Show moment w/ Laurie Anderson) and priority seating and such all weekend long.

Also I know I say this every year but WOW the food in Knoxville is good.

Aw damn, just saw the news that Tony Conrad has to cancel for health reasons :( They're still going to perform Inside The Dream Syndicate w the Faust guys and unnamed special guests; the other Conrad slot is just gonna be a retrospective of some of his other pieces. Bummer; hope he gets better soon.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Day 1 -- dug Olivia Chaney, the Arkestra, the Gloaming. YLT not so much -- they had all these people on stage, Zeena Parkins and Bryce Dessner and an Arkestra dude and others, but they just noodled. I left after an hour so maybe it eventually turned into something, but what I saw was slow-motion wanking.

Schick at the Tennessee was easily my day 1 highlight - the Naqoyqatsi piece in particular; all three pieces were great but that one absolutely dropped a rock on me. Cosign not really feeling the YLT jam session, although I still plan on catching them at the Bijou tomorrow.

So far today I caught maybe 20 minutes of Tony Buck and Zeena Parkins before checking out to go see Adams' installation at the Sanctuary (much much much cooler; I'm super stoked for Inuksuit on Sunday now). Currently at the Standard sprawling out on one of these weird couches they have set up listening to Laurie Anderson's Lou Reed drone piece and it's pretty great. Gonna head over to Anthony Braxton in a second. If you see a dude in a hoodie and an orange t-shirt that reads "Burning Man can suck it", holla at ya boy

Steven Schick conducted stuff from Naqoyqatsi? I fucking love that score.

Schick and company performing Xenakis on boats on the lake in Central Park was one of the peak live experiences of my life

Yeah it was pretty revelatory - I'd actually never seen the movie (I bought the Criterion set of the whole trilogy but never got around to Naqoyqatsi since reviews were so middling) but if the rest of the score is as good as the piece from last night I'm sold.

In other news, Will Oldham/Bryce/eighth blackbird's group show was AWESOME; they closed with "One With The Birds" and it was fucking glorious.

Oh damn, they just announced Nico Muhly and Philip Glass are going to be playing w/ eighth blackbird at the Sanctuary tonight!!!!!

Oh man I'm glad I sprang for a vip pass; the line at the Sanctuary is snaking around the corner

The Glass/Muhly/8bb thing turned out to be wonderful (they ended up playing Music For Similar Motions) and then I was able to get over to the Faust Inside The Dream Syndicate in time to catch the single song they apparently spent their whole set playing. Needless to say it was great and my ears are still ringing. Saints alive, do I ever love this festival to death. Also I bought a shirt which looks like something Conway Twitty would have worn; it's just fucking glorious. Knoxville owns a whole lot.

Favorite stuff: Necks, Xylouris White, Mary Halvorson, Braxton Trio (missed the 10+1), Boogarins, Olivia Chaney, Lou Reed's Drones, JLA's Veils and Vesper, Zeena Parkins and Tony Buck

Other good stuff: Philip Glass/Laurie Anderson, Arkestra, the Gloaming, Vijay Iyer/Wadada Leo Smith, Sunn0))), Kamasi Washington, Ikue Mori, nief-norf

(Sunn0))) could have made the favorite list, but they were about 20 minutes too long for me. Stopped being physically overwhelming and became kind of tedious.)

Stuff I wish I'd seen: Tons!

Looking forward to Inuksuit today.

the biggest disappointment of this festival by far was Faust using women as stage props

i dunno, i thought having a literal "knitting circle" was a funny critique of the whole "rock band on stage" from dudes who literally spent a song sitting in the audience and screaming. The women worked completely independently of them, knitting and drinking and enjoying themselves while this loud show of preening art-rock duded happened behind them. Didn't seem exploitative to me, but ultimately that call isn't mine or crut's to make

My absolute favorite bit was either Schick leading the KSO in the piece from Naqoyqatsi or, inexplicably, Lambchop (who I'd never particularly rated before but completely sent me scrambling to Discogs in search of their back catalogue). Inuksuit, Wichita Vortex Sutra and eighth blackbird's set w/ Bryce & BPB were all standouts as well. Man it was all just so great!

Didn't seem exploitative to me, but ultimately that call isn't mine or crut's to make

my fiancee was furious, fwiw.

So envious of people who are seeing this lineup.

My Saturday ran from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. and went Mary Halvorson--Laurie Anderson/Philip Glass--the Necks--Anthony Braxton Trio--Sunn0)))--Kamasi Washington. Pretty good day.

there were knitters onstage when i saw them in chicago and i can't say i felt bothered by it. i talked with a few of them afterwards and they were amused because they had no idea what they were getting themselves into. apparently a friend asked them if they would knit on stage and they were like "…ok". I found their composure really interesting actually. they were on a stage with a ton of people looking at them and they showed no self-consciousness whatsoever. it was pretty impressive considering the odd circumstances. that's just my 2 cents.

wish i would have been there! how was the tony buck/zeena parkins thing? i saw 8 seconds of it via northern spy's twitter but that was not enough.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/live-reviews/big-ears-2016-gathers-thousands-in-pursuit-of-drone-20160404

I really wish I had gotten the chance to see Inuksuit but we had no place to park.

for the record i hope it is totally clear that i am not trying to invalidate any reaction to the knitters, just adding my own genuine reaction
if the knitters elicit a range of reactions, arty mission accomplished?

The one time I saw Faust live (Seattle off ramp early to mid 90s) they were painting on a canvas onstage while playing and also using a power saw; tbh it struck me as really corny at the time

how was the tony buck/zeena parkins thing?

Really good! At first I was just kind of like, OK, interesting -- but the longer I watched, the more I got into it. Her relationship with her harp is really intense, it's a very physical performance, caressing it and bashing on it and everything in between. And Tony Buck did a good job providing a shifting background. It was cool.

A show that I haven't seen much about in the write-ups (probably because everyone was at the Braxton 10+1 at the time) is Xylouris White. I'd never had a chance to see Jim White live before, and he was so much fun to watch. One of the best drummers alive, imo. Xylouris was good too, but I would've honestly sat and just watched Jim White solo.

Nice write-up, Whiney! I think we were just behind you at Sunn. That was something.

I left the Buck/Parkins thing after like 20 minutes; both Veils & Vespers & the Lou Reed drones were scheduled for that day and I figured I should conserve my patience wherever possible. in retrospect I do regret not bailing on the last two songs of Glass/Anderson to try to get into the Necks show though; some ass spent the bulk of the next-to-last piece they played squatting in the aisle in front of the pit recording the whole thing (amazingly security didn't do anything) and I think it kind of threw them off; as soon as the piece ended Glass stepped away from the mic to talk to Laurie about something private, which I suspect might have had been general kvetching about that guy's presence. I do not regret skipping Sunn given the proximity of my seats ; I would have gone deaf and then I wouldn't have been able to hear Inuksuit.

however I do regret not trying to catch more Schick performances; I think I'm gonna start keeping tabs on the La Jolla Symphony for stuff worth going to (this season alone he's already staged Become Ocean & The Light That Fills The World and a really amazing Ligeti to boot, and I missed all of it). speaking of Schick leading Become Ocean, the Schick/KSO perfomance of it from the first night is gradually evolving into one of those pieces that keeps popping into my mind; I enjoyed it at the time but I kept comparing it to that performance of Reich's Drumming from 2014 (which is up there with, like the Daft Punk Pyramid show from Coachella and LCD Soundsystem at the Echo on my list of best musical performances I've ever seen) so I think I kinda underrated it in the moment. the fact that it came right after that truly righteous Naqoyqatsi piece (which is like a fastball straight down the middle of my strike zone and resolutely remains a best-of-fest performance) probably didn't do it any favors at the time either.

in other news, I enjoyed CoS' writeup of the weekend a whole bunch: http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/04/big-ears-2016-festival-review-top-15-performances/ I'm so happy to see so many confirmations that the festival had its best year; I definitely had a bunch of moments running around town of wondering how in God's name a program this simultaneously vast and narrow could turn a profit, but then I'd come up a hill and see a line for, like, Anthony Braxton or the Sanctuary show Friday night stretching around the corner and be like oh right. I can't wait for next year's show; I'm already researching different hotel options (if only the Oliver wasn't given over to musicians that weekend) and setting money aside for Pioneer House.

also I hope they do the "send us your dream list of acts for next year's show" thing again because I read that David Mancuso still throws Loft parties every couple years and how fucking much would that fit the festival's general oeuvre of shows you may never get the chance to see again. actually they could easily make a really good program of expansive weirdo leftfield disco DJs who could fit right in - someone like Harvey or Eric Duncan or Lindstrom or Sweeney can easily play sets as long as the drone pieces, and a bigger dance program might be a really nice counterpoint to all the gorgeously proper performances that one experiences by just sitting/standing in front of the train; they do a good job of picking dance acts like Jamie xx or Nico who don't attract a bunch of annoying e'd-up shitlords (or rather who principally attract the discerning e'd-up shitlord) but they could do way more without abandoning their stated core values.

also also for anyone considering going next year VIP tickets are totally worth it if you can swing the cost; priority entry alone makes it worth the price; I probably wouldn't have gotten into the aforementioned Sanctuary show if I'd had to stand in the gen-pop line, and I probably would have had to camp out to get into Kamasi. I do wish they'd let you sit anywhere in the Tennessee, though (all they'd need to do would be let VIPs in first, just like they do at all the other venues); my seat neighbors were all nice folks but it'd be nice to meet more people and hear pieces from different angles and just generally experience more of that truly wonderful structure. seriously, an ox giving birth on stage would still probably be a picturesque experience; I know I say this several times a year but the whole place is just crushingly gorgeous, all the way down to the bathrooms.

Just reading everyone's experiences has been simultaneously heart-warming & frustrating that I failed to make it this year (though getting to see Faust in Louisville makes up for it just a little). After all these reviews, I promised myself to get 2017 tickets the day they go on sale and sleep on a bench if necessary.

The one time I saw Faust live (Seattle off ramp early to mid 90s) they were painting on a canvas onstage while playing and also using a power saw; tbh it struck me as really corny at the time

I saw them in SF on that tour. I thought Keiji Haino, who was one of the openers, kind of blew them offstage.

that's what he does!

Ugh if only haino had been on the Seattle bill! I've never seen him live.