Big Ears is musical gourmet's delight
There is a trade off every year at the Big Ears Festival: What can you stand to miss? Talking with fellow attendees, you're sure to kick yourself for not making it to a show that turned out to be someone's favorite event of the festival.
But there's no way to see it all.
Just before the opening of the 2017 festival, Big Ears founder and AC Entertainment head Ashley Capps said scheduling the event is sometimes challenging because organizers don't want acts that are too similar going on at the same time, and they also have to take setup and production schedules into account.
"The dynamics of all the opportunities that you have at any given time just creates excitement at a festival," Capps said. "You go to a restaurant and they offer several different entrees and side dishes. Most people just choose one and enjoy it. It's about being in the moment and not letting what you're missing distract you from where you are."
At Big Ears, though, there are dishes that you may never have the chance to try again, so the choice is a little harder. Sometimes you sample a little before moving on. Other times you know you need to sit down for the whole experience.
On Friday night at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Norwegian accordionist Frode Haltli led an ensemble in a mesmerizing performance that included accordion, xylophone, marimba, wine glasses, bowed cymbals and Emilia Amper playing the nyckelharpa, a Scandinavian instrument. Performed in the center of the audience, the musicians were situated both in the middle of and outside the spectators to make the show immersive and enchanting. The music itself went from meditative to what sounded like a European hoedown. The approximately 120 people who attended emerged from the show chattering happily about it and saying they'd tell friends about the repeat Saturday show.
Down the street at Church Street Methodist, which fronts Henley Street, the crowd was about the same for the choir The Crossing and the saxophone quartet performing Gavin Bryars' "The Fifth Century." However, the payoff there was great as well. It was somber. It was beautiful. And the venue was perfect for the performance.
A little later at the Bijou, The Carla Bley Trios (pianist/composer Bley, bassist Steve Swallow and saxophonist Andy Sheppard) played sweet, gentle and smart jazz.The trio opened with "Copycat," a song the group had performed only once before, and later premiered "Beautiful Telephones," which Bley only finished writing the week before. Bley said President Donald Trump had inspired the piece (his comment about the White House having "beautiful" telephones). Opening ominously, parts of it sounded like it could've been a soundtrack to a film noir, but it was peppered with musical quotes. The trio of musicians, who are in their 70s and 80s, were marvels of musical economy. No notes or chords were superfluous and the impact was great.
On Saturday at noon, vocalist Meredith Monk performed her second show of the festival. The event was packed for Monk making non-word whoops, chirps and hollers and, later, some pieces with real words. Some things are best appreciated live, and Monk's recorded music cannot do justice to experiencing her live. Her opening a cappella songs, which included a little throat singing, were definitely ear-widening experiences. And when Monk began singing in a spooky guttural old-woman voice in some of the numbers, it was a little like she was speaking in tongues in some primitive Baptist church. Monk's vocal work has a little bit of everything in it, and love it or hate it you'd be hard to not be impressed and surprised by it.
Not long after that, Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy performed with the duo Chikamorachi at the Mill & Mine. It was loud noise rock that sent a few patrons out the door. But that was OK, there was plenty of gentle sounds to be had elsewhere.
Things were much more subdued later in the night when singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt and his band The Magnetic Fields presented the first program of his "50 Song Memoir" show at the Tennessee Theatre. Merritt wrote one song for each year he has been alive, each with some autobiographical element. During the concert, Merritt sat surrounded by a set that looked like a child's bedroom in some quaint little home, which was itself surrounded by a half circle of musicians, some of which could not be seen because of the set. Merritt introduced the songs with either bits of history or information or humorous non-sequiturs. Cartoon and live action videos were projected above the set for most of the of the songs.
Merritt's dour low-baritone delivery of the songs quickly became charming and there was a hint of humor even in the most disturbing songs (his mother had some really bad boyfriends!).
A sojourn to see Yasmine Hamdan at The Standard on Jackson Avenue was diverted for a stop at an empty lot on Gay Street where musicians — organized by Guy Picciotto of the band Fugazi — were improvising to Jem Cohen films of New York City scenes projected on a building wall. Saxophonist Matana Roberts opened the work with a long, beautiful solo before an array of other musicians added their instruments' voices.
Mayor Madeline Rogero stood with a group of friends and commented that this was particularly special because the lot would be developed by next year. Rogero, a very vocal supporter of the festival, said she had seen and enjoyed My Brightest Diamond, Lisa Moore and Wilco.
"I think I was the only person in the audience who had never seen Wilco," she said.
Big Ears artists also were discovering Knoxville. Instead of having events catered for artists, the festival gave them meal cards at downtown restaurants. Carla Bley was reportedly seen at Kaizen for most of her meals, and locals got to brush shoulders with performers all over town. Heading back to the Tennessee Theatre on Saturday for the Dave Harrington Group performing a live soundtrack to the film "No Country for Old Men" (a fun experience that gave the film a much different feel), singer-songwriter Robyn Hitchcock sat with a group of friends having drinks outside at Sapphire on Gay Street.
Out of town visitors also had the chance to get a taste of Knoxville's music scene if they had the mind to. Thursday featured the Carla Bley with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, the Knoxville-based percussion group Nief-Norf performed throughout the weekend and local rock and folk greats performed as part of the "Knoxville Bermuda Triangle of the Appalachians" show at Jackson Terminal. Sunday's performance at the Mill & Mine with the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra may have been one of the sweetest moments, though.
The symphony assembled on the floor of the venue and the audience sat on the floor around them while conductor Aram Demirjian led the orchestra through works by Bach, John Adams (baritone Mark Diamond sang the vocal part of "The Wound Dresser") and acclaimed young composer Matthew Aucoin, who was on hand to introduce his new work, "Evidence."
The work was followed by the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, which never had performed in North America, with members of the KSO for Bryars' masterpiece "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet."
The crowds were a little smaller Sunday and shows became a little more intimate. At the Standard, singer Theo Bleckmann (who also performed earlier at the Bijou) and guitarist Ben Monder performed a program that was sometimes ethereal, sometimes mind-boggling and sometimes laced with humor. Bleckmann, whose tenor has an otherworldly beauty to it, manipulated his voice with loops and electronics, and simply playing with the microphone, and then wowed you even more when he kept his voice pure. During the jazz standard "I'll Remember You," Bleckman and Monder imitated the sound of a CD sticking throughout the song before taking the number off in some bizarrely beautiful outer space cacophony.
Not everything at Big Ears is for everyone, but anyone can find something at Big Ears that is for them. No other city in the world has anything quite like it. When it comes around again, don't pass up the chance to get a taste of it.