Every year I pick someone who, in my op[inion, "wins" the Big Ears music festival. Usually, it's based on the most appearances, or at least the most appearances that I saw. Other years, it's someone who seems to have used the festival in some unique or creative way to make some sort of statement. Past winners have included pianist Brian Marsella and guitarist Marc Ribot. This year's winner has got to be guitarist Nels Cline.
Not only did I see The Nels Cline Singers at the Mill & Mine on Friday afternoon, but I also saw him with Jenny Scheinman's All Species Parade at the Bijou Theatre on Saturday night and with his new Consentrik Quartet at The Point, a church, on Sunday night. He also played with with 101 Audio Odyssey on Friday and then later that evening as part of the Suss-curated Across the Horizon series, but unfortunately I missed those sets (scheduling conflicts). He also participated in a couple panel discussions and record-signing events at the festival.
After I got back home from Knoxville and was relaxing in front of the television last night, I saw Nels sitting in with the house band on the Stephen Colbert Late Show. Busy man.
There are no vocalists in the ironically named Nels Cline Singers. The band consists of Nels on guitar, naturally, as well as punk-jazz saxophone iconoclast Skerik (Les Claypool, Garage a Trois, Bobby Previte), bass powerhouse Trevor Dunn (Mr. Bungle, John Zorn), longtime collaborator and drummer Scott Amendola (Bill Frisell, Charlie Hunter, Ben Goldberg) and Brazilian percussionist Cyro Baptista (Zorn’s The Dreamers, Caetano Veloso, Paul Simon). Keyboardist Brian Marsella, who's performed with Cyro Baptista’s Beat the Donkey and multiple John Zorn projects, was supposed to perform with the Singers at Big Ears, but Nels announced that Marsella was about to become a first-time father so his absence was understandable.
Among other tunes, the Singers performed a cover of Caetano Veloso's Segunda, which appeared on their 2020 Share The Wealth album.
“The inspiration was from hearing the Gal Costa studio version” of the song, Cline has said, referring to her 2011 album, Recanto. "I didn’t know anything about the lyrics so I asked Cyro’s wife, Eleonora Alberto, who offered to translate it. It turns out the lyrics are extremely poetic and timely. The song is essentially like a Black Lives Matter anthem. It’s about a black Brazilian ruminating on how people think that blacks are lazy and that the light-skinned people are the industrious people. And it incorporates the idea of White Monday, which is a Catholic holiday in Brazil. So Caetano uses this idea of the working man and the holiday and the legacy of black slavery in Brazil as this kind of potent, poetic statement.”
I also saw Nels perform on Saturday night with Jenny Scheinman's All Species Parade, which in addition to Cline and violinist Scheinman also included pianist Carmen Staaf, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer Kenny Wollesen, as well as additional guitarists Bill Frisell and Julian Lage. That's one all-star lineup right there, a veritable pantheon of jazz-guitar gods.
Scheinman spent years in the NYC downtown music scene, both leading her own bands as well as working alongside artists ranging from Jason Moran to Brian Blade and Lucinda Williams to Lou Reed. She eventually moved back to her Pacific Northwest home in California's Humboldt County, where she was reawakened to the extraordinary biodiversity of the region, which inspired her to compose All Species Parade, a swinging double album of tunes reminiscent of classic jazz violinists like Stéphane Grappelli while informed by contemporary and post-modern jazz influences, and one of the best LPs of last year.
Nels Cline’s Consentrik Quartet, a new project but first conceived in the summer of 2019, performed Sunday night, the penultimate set I caught this year. Their debut eponymous album was released just two weeks ago.
In addition to Cline, the Consentrik Quartet includes drummer Tom Rainey, bassist Chris Lightcap, and the fine saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock. Cline first assembled the musicians six years ago in Brooklyn for a free-improv set at John Zorn’s venue, The Stone. A commission and grant from Philadelphia's Ars Nova Workshop allowed Cline to compose new music, with which he intended to tour. "And then the pandemic hit," Cline says. He estimates that he wrote half of this material during lockdown, first in Brooklyn and then in rural upstate New York, where he and his wife, Yuka Honda, relocated.
As befits the musicians involved, the Quartet's music is more forward-leaning and abstract than that of the Nels Cline Singers, making for a great set to lead up to the finale of the festival.
I'll unpack more of Big Ears in the coming days, but it seemed fitting to start the process with this year's festival champion.
And here we go (finally). Pics of the last day of Big Ears 2025, posted after I've already checked out of my hotel, left Knoxville, and drove home.
The day started at The Standard with a high-energy set by the Dan Weiss Even Odds Trio, a bass-less band featuring pianist Matt Mitchell and altoist Miguel Zenon.
I stayed at The Standard for a tribute to the late Susan Alcorn, who had been scheduled to play at this year's festival. Her legacy was honored by (l to r) wordless vocalist Bonnie Lander, the extraordinary guitarist Mary Halvorson, violinist yuniya edi kwon, and bassist Lester St. Louis, who we had seen at Big Ears two years ago playing with the late Jaimie Branch. Not pictured is drummer Ryan Sawyer.
From The Standard, I headed uptown to The Point, the northernmost venue at the festival for a highly entertaining set by Kahil El’Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, including trumpeter Corey Wilkes and saxophonist Alex Harding.
One of the most anticipated sets of the festival was also at The Point - the debut of Nels Cline's Concentrik Quartet, featuring Ingrid Laubrock, bassist Chris Lightcap, and drummer Tom Rainey (not pictured).
Finally, the day and the festival ended back at The Standard with a set by the Steve Lehman Trio plus Mark Turner on tenor sax playing the music of Anthony Braxton (plus a few original compositions and a piece by Andrew Hill).
And that was it and like all good things, Big Ears 2025 came to an end. I'll do some unpacking and discussions of the sets at a later date - these posts are mainly mnemonic reminders of what I saw and when. But I will say here that it was all most enjoyable and well worth the effort of taking in all these great sets of music.
Whew! Another fun-filled day at Big Ears yesterday. I started my day early on a pleasant Tennessee afternoon with Alan Rudolph's Sunrise Quartet and an hour plus of ambient new age jazz and improvisation.
My next set was the Luke Stewart Silt Trio playing modern jazz on a modern stage.
One of my highlights of the day and of the entire festival was Sylvia Courvoisier and her Chimera ensemble playing music from their album of the same name. The all-star band included Wadada Leo Smith and Nate Wooley of trumpet, Ikue Mori on electronics, Drew Gress on bass, Kenny Wollesen on vibes, drums and percussion, and Nasheet Waits on drums. Beautiful, amazing music in a captivating set.
The last time I saw Ukraine's DakhaBrakha was in 2014, just after Putin's invasion of Crimea. Now here we are in 2025 while Ukraine is facing a whole new set of challenges, now including the U.S. itself. In any event, they are still amazing, with otherworldly harmonies, driving percussion, and innovative songwriting, all while bringing awareness and raising money for a globally important cause. It was an uplifting and emotional set with the audience expressing heartfelt support for the Ukrainian people and their existential cause.
Not to be outdone by Sylvie Courvoisier's all-star band, jazz violinist Jenny Scheinman's All Species Parade band featured three jazz guitar superstars (l to r): Julian Lage (seated), Bill Frisell, and Nels Cline. Obviously, it was a killer set.
And speaking of a lot of guitarists - Thor Harris' band Water Damage included Thor on whatever handmade instrument that he was playing, two drummers, two bassists, a violin, and seven electric guitars, including Kramer and David Grubbs, playing Reel 25 - the same doom metal riff over and over and over again for 45 straight minutes until the band and audience entered into a state of transcendent euphoria together. Loud, noisy, confrontational, and slightly ridiculous, it was the perfect nightcap (12:30 to 1:15 am) for the day.
A final Guinness with some Big Ears friends at Clancy's, and then to bed by 2:45. Up at 7:30, and ready and roaring to go at it all again for one final day.
Here's the recap of who I saw at Big Ears on Friday, starting with The Nels Cline Singers. As you probably know, the name's ironic and there are no vocalists in the "Singers," but in addition to Nels on guitar, the band included saxophonist Skerit, percussionist Cyro Baptista, and bassist Trevor Dunn. Pianist Brian Marsalla was supposed to be with the band but was given the day off because he and his wife are about to have their first child.
After the "Singers," I saw the Sun Ra Arkestra. You might notice James McNew and Georgia Kaplan of Yo La Tengo in the picture below - the set was a joint collaboration by the Arkestra and Yo La Tengo. They've played together before, and YLT has recorded Sun Ra's Nuclear War (which closed this set before the traditional curtain closer Space Is the Place). I'm a big fan of both bands, and the set turned out to be even better than I had thought.
After SRA/YLT, I saw a set by Thor Harris at Knoxville's First Presbyterian Church. The set consisted of two numbers - a solo performance by Thor on looped electric keyboards and clarinet, and a mostly acoustic performance including members of his band Water Damage, including guitarist Marissa Anderson.
Here's guitarist David Grubbs with the new band Squanderers, which also includes guitarists Kramer and Wendy Eisenberg (not pictured, duh).
And here's Mike Reed's Separatist Party, which includes, in addition to drummer Reed, cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, members of electronic jazz band Bitchin' Bajas, and spoken word performer Marvin Tate.
A highlight of the day was forward leaning, avant jazz quartet أحمد [Ahmed].
The day ended with a set by electronic producers/turntablists Maria Chavez + Victoria Shen + Mariam Rezaei. Here's Shen using her body as a string instrument, bowing a line between her neck and foot, while modulating the tone with her leg. Later she was cracking a bullwhip at the edge of the stage, terrifying those of us in the front row as she whirled the whip over our heads before cracking it down inches away from us (she nicked my thumb, not on the whip's cracking down stroke, but on the upstroke just before the crackdown). That was the day's WTF, only-at-Big Ears moment.
Despite the appearance of that Lego-looking train station, I'm not in Minecraft-land but in Knoxville, Tennessee for the annual Big Ears music festival, my sixth since 2018 (the fest was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 because of the covids).
Big Ears specializes in jazz, experimental and avant-garde music, but my opening night could have been mistaken for the Pitchfork Festival. That's neither a complaint nor a boast, just a statement of fact. I opened this year with a set by Yo La Tengo, despite the fact that I've seen them many times before. I do love their most recent album though, a return to 90s indie form in my opinion, and their set last night was as energetic and exciting as any I've seen by them, Bonus points: they were accompanied by guitarist William Tyler for this set.
After Yo La Tengo, I saw bassoonist Joy Guidry, a decidedly only-at-Big Ears, non-Pitchfork set. In contrast to the full band and gospel singing of her recent LP, Amen, Joy performed in a trio setting, accompanied by a violinist/keyboardist and a drummer. The music was atmospheric and almost ambient, quite a contrast to the full-throated, joyous Amen (the festival subtitled her set as Amen). I was disappointed, although once I realized that the set wasn't going to be a cover of the album but something else, I settled in and really dug the spooky atmospherics. . They played in a near-dark church, so no photography was possible.
Back to Pitchfork-land: although not officially a part of Big Ears, Knoxville's adventurous Pilot Light club was running a small DIY event of their own, and after Joy Guidry, I walked over to the club and caught a set by Animal Collective's Geologist. Playing solo with a hand-cranked hurdy-gurdy and electronics, he managed to create psychedelic, occasionally eastern sounding drones and jams in the tiny club (I think the stage was larger than the audience area). I was surprised that despite Animal Collective's popularity, I got in without waiting on a line and was able to walk right up to the stage...
My final set of the night was Nicolas Jaar's Darkside. I cut it close time-wise (didn't want to leave Geologist early) but was still able to walk right into the venue (I have a VIP pass) and got reasonably close to the stage. It was n exciting and fun set of driving EDM/IDM music and surprisingly textured and varied for the genre (it wasn't ALL four-on-the-floor dance beats) but still got the audience moving.
So four bands on the opening night and I even had time to stop in an Irish pub for a beer. I also met with some friends after the Darkside show for another couple beers, too. A good start for a good festival.
If I must die you must live to tell my story to sell my things to buy a piece of cloth and some strings (make it white with a long tail) so that a child, somewhere in Gaza, while looking heaven in the eye awaiting his dad who left in a blaze - and bid no one farewell not even to his flesh not even to himself - sees the kite, the kite you made, flying up above, and thinks for a moment an angel is there bringing back love If I must die let it bring hope let it be a tale
- Refaat Alareer (1979-2023), killed December 6, 2023 by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza, along with his brother, sister, and four of his nephews.
According to my Facebook Memories, 10 years ago today I saw the band Hundred Waters at The Earl. Mitski, then relatively unknown, opened.
Hundred Water are a psychedelic indie rock band fronted by Nicole Miglis on vocals, keyboards, and occasional flute. Their first album, released in 2012, was self titled, and their subsequent two LPs were The Moon Rang Like a Bell (2014) and Communicating (2017).
Yesterday, Miglis released a solo LP titled Re: Communicating which consists of solo piano versions of songs from the Communicating album. All solo piano - no vocals, no drums, no electronics - just piano. It's an interesting decision, considering the source material was released eight years ago and the sound is a stark departure from the rest of Hundred Waters' discography.
It's not uninteresting, though. Without knowing the context, a listener might take the tracks for a collection of semi-classical piano studies. In the old days of record stores and bins sorted by categories, this one would probably have gone into the Classical or at least Instrumental aisles. But I've bought lots of music out of those bins back in the day (okay, mostly the rock and jazz bins, but I wasn't without purchases from Classical and Instrumental).
I'm all for artists expanding their techniques and taking bold artistic chances. Here's a sample if you're curious (and also a link to buy her music should you be so inclined).
For comparison purposes, here's the original, Blanket Me, a Julia Holter-esque track from the Communicating LP:
