Unpacking Big Ears: The John Zorn Sets

"No photography," the signs said, and to make sure no one missed it, the ushers walked up and down the aisles of the Bijou holding up the signs. Now, I'm not a big fan of following the rules just because the rules exist, and while it would have been very easy to sneak a few quick shots of the John Zorn performances from the seats, I uncharacteristically complied. Others didn't, apparently, so all the pics here were found on social media (the signs didn't say "no reposting pics that others might have taken").

For the third time in five years (by my count), the 2026 Big Ears festival included a Zorn residency, basically handing over The Bijou Theater to him for two days (Friday  and Saturday). As far as I'm concerned, they can give him a residency every year - let him have the full run of the Bijou all four days to do whatever the hell he wants. His music is that diverse, his roster of associated artists that large, and his universe that expansive and fascinating that it wouldn't get old. Alternatively, if there wee a multi-day Zorn festival every year (most likely in New York), I'd go.

This year's residency included a duet set with Laurie Anderson, his vocal arrangements for soprano Barbara Hannigan, Love Songs featuring Petra Haden, piano compositions for the Brian Marsella Trio,  Incerto, featuring Marsella and Julian Lage, chamber music with the Junction Trio, and a live soundtrack for experimental cinema with Ikue Mori.

But probably the most anticipated Zorn set was the reunion of his original Masada quartet, featuring Zorn (who doesn't perform at all of his sets), trumpeter Dave Douglas, bassist Greg Cohen, and drummer Joey Baron. The original OG Masada, who haven't performed together since 2001, as far as I know. The four of them together on stage, performing the music from their now sadly out-of-print CDs on the Japanese DIW label, was a truly historic event, the kind of thing Ken Burns should do a documentary about if only he could break free of Wynton Marsallis' influence and learn to connect the dots between post-bop jazz and Zorn's klezmer-influenced, post-Ornette music.  

The demand for the show was such that they played two sets, one Friday morning (well, starting 12 noon) and a second Saturday night. I caught the Friday show, and intended to go on Saturday, too, but got caught up in the Big Ears schedule conflicts. 

The set was fantastic. The band swung hard, the solos were outstanding, and the rhythm section of Cohen and Burns was tight. I'm hoping, praying, that the set was recorded, as I would love to be able to relive the experience again. If you're not familiar what with what the hybrid of Zorn's downtown avant-garde, Ornette's harmolodics, and traditional klezmer might sound like, here's the quartet in 1999 (back in Zorn's long-hair phase): 

In addition to with Masada, on Sunday night I also got to see trumpeter Dave Douglas and his own quartet, which included the iconoclastic saxoplonist James Brandon Lewis, cellist Tomeka Reid, and guitarist Rafiq Bhatia and drummer Ian Chang of the band Son Lux.

 

On Friday night, after starting the day with Masada, I ended the day with Zorn's closing set, Awakening Ground, a trio improvisation among Zorn, keyboardist John Medeski, and drummer Dave Lombardo (of Slayer fame).  

The set was energetic and amazing, but one thing that rally stood out to me was how limited rock-music drumming is compared to jazz. This isn't a knock on Lombardo - he's a great drummer, albeit a great rock drummer. But after a day of listening to Joey Baron, Ben Lumsdaine (with Jeff Parker's trio),  Ben Perowsky (with Steven Bernstein's band), and Jordan Glenn (with Fred Frith), rock drumming sounded lead-footed and clumsy. One big difference is the use of cymbals. While jazz drummers are playing several different rhythms simultaneously and keeping the cymbals in constant use in support of one rhythm or another, Lombardo tends to use them only at the end of a run across his toms and snare, as a sort of exclamations point ("boom-boom-ba-doom-splash!"). After listening to all those cymbals all day, it almost felt like I was listening to recorded music with one track missing - where's the rest of the drums?

Not to say Lombardo wasn't heavy and powerful - he was. But as another example of the difference between rock and jazz drumming, at one point during Awakening Ground, Lombardo lost his drum stick in the middle of his big showcase solo. Not dissing Dave - everyone loses drumsticks (it happens). I clearly saw the stick go flying up in the air after a particularly powerful strike. But the lost stick seemed to throw Lombardo off, and he had to temporarily stop his solo, grab another stick and start again from where he had left off. All this was probably no more than a second or two and many people might not even have noticed, but Zorn walked over to Dave's drum set after the song ended to console him for his faux pas.                

By contrast, on Saturday night, part of the reason I didn't see the second Masada set is because I was at The Blackbox (formerly the Old City Performing Arts Center) watching the Darius Jones Trio with veteran jazz drummer Gerald Cleaver.

Like Lombardo, Cleaver (unfortunately, not in the picture above) also lost a drumstick during his performance (like I said, it happens). But Cleaver literally didn't miss a beat - his other hand busily tapping out a polyrhythm (on the cymbals) and his feet working the bass drums, he calmly pulled another stick out of his kit and kept on going, and if you didn't see the stick fly off, you'd never have known it happened by listening.

Anyway, not shitting on Lombardo, and my observation (not even a criticism) is the well-known difference between rock and jazz drumming. But as long as I mentioned Darius Jones, although he's not a Zorn associate (the Zorniverse), I'll mention here that his set was magnificent, the sort of mysterious, almost mystical, late-night free jazz one might of heard in a downtown loft in the 1970s.

Back to Zorn. I started Saturday off with a performance of his game-piece, Cobra, performed by a large, all-star ensemble including Lombardo, Ches Smith, Brian Marsella, John Medeski, Jorge Roeder, Simon Hanes, Ikue Mori, Sae Hashimoto, Wendy Eisenberg, William Winant, Kenny Wollesen, and many more.

It's difficult to describe a performance of Cobra. It's basically a group improvisation set to some arcane rules, conducted by Zorn and based on suggestions by the performers. Hands are raised, signs are flashed, headbands are worn at various times by various soloists, and it's all chaotic and bizarre and wonderful, and no two performances are ever anything like each other.

Which brings me around to two other sets by two other large ensembles. While not officially part of the Zorn residency, both were led by members of his core group of performers and featured participants in his Cobra set.

First, Sunday started with a set by Brian Marsella's Imaginarium. 

The large ensemble included three horns, a drummer and two percussionists, including Sae Hashimoto, Meg Okura on violin, John Lee on guitar, and bass, and credit should also go to the projectionist, who showed a continuous series of dazzling lights, trippy films, and other visual effects that changed with every song. This short video was screened during the first full piece of the set after Marsella's sung/spoken introduction:

"Imaginarium" is a fitting name for the ensemble, as their performance was all over the musical universe, never lingering in one spot for long. Violinist Meg Okura and guitarist John Lee had particular standout moments, but everyone contributed, and contributed mightily, to the effort. If you like Burnt Weenie Sandwich/Waka-jawaka-era Frank Zappa, this was the set for you. If you like having your mind blown by sheer creativity, this was the set for you. If you just like good music, daringly composed and flawlessly performed, this was the set for you. Along with Masada, it was one of the standout sets of the whole festival for me. 

Finally, later on that same Sunday, I caught Simon Hanes' Gargantua, a fitting name for his 18-person ensemble. Three was the operational number for this band, as it had three vocalists, three French horns, three trombones, three electric guitars, three bassists, and three drummers, all conducted, frantically, by Hayes.

Hanes is best known to Zorn fans for his punk-rock outfit Trigger and their CD of Zorn's Bagatelle compositions. He's also part of the Italian soundtrack-pop band Tredici Bacci and has collaborated with pianist Anthony Coleman. But Gargantua was something else entirely. What it was, I'm still not sure, as it turned on a dime, sometimes mid-song, from chamber ensemble to noise to almost ambient vocal harmony to funk and every other possible genre Hanes could imagine. At one point, just to give you an idea of the variability, the score called for the three singers to yell and swear at Hanes ("fuck you, Simon!") as they balled up the sheet music and threw it at him. Two minutes later, they were singing beautiful polytonal harmonies. Three were triple trombone solos reminiscent of Centipede's Septober Energy. It was fun if exhausting in the sheer exuberance of its creativity.

I was at the front row, right behind Simon's conducting, and it was hard to capture the full ensemble or anything other than Hanes' butt. Here's a pic I found of the set on social media, with your humble narrator visible on the rail wearing his trademark brown cap.   

And that's it, although that a lot - three "official" Zorn residency sets, a set by his Masada bandmate Dave Douglas, two large ensemble sets led by two of his frequent collaborators, and Darius Jones thrown in for good measure.

Like I said, Big Ears could hold a Zorn residency every year, just give him the keys to the Bijou for the weekend, and I'd he happy. 

Easter

Unpacking Big Ears: The Nels Cline Sets

 

I'll say this about Big Ears 2026 - lots of guitarists. They say guitar music is dead, and that may be true for pop music, but the guitar is alive and well in the worlds of jazz and the avant-garde. Not only was I able to catch three very different sets by the wonderful Mary Halvorson, I also caught three by the versatile Nels Cline. 

Cline was my "winner" of Big Ears 2025 with five appearances (that I know of), although I was only able to catch three. I saw him three times this year, too, tied with Halvorson, but I still gave the "winner" crown to the band SML for their three-night residency of two sets per night and the way they used that residency to be the talk of the town this year. But enough about them, it's Nels time.

Thursday night, the opening day, ended with a late-night (11:30-1:00) set by Medeski, Martin, Metzger and Cline, lined up below as Medeski, Cline, Metzger, and Martin, at the Mill & Mine.         

Like Ches Smith's Clone Row earlier that evening, MMM&C were a two-guitar combo, with Medeski's organ pedals providing the bass lines. Here they are free improvising at a Phish after-party at Le Poisson Rouge in New York last December:  

Overall, their sound at Big Ears was more rambunctious and noisy than the relatively polite show above, and Cline seemed to drown Metzger out much of the time and gave him less space to lead. But after seeing Clone Row and two sets by SML, it was a great way to end the first night.

On Friday, even before I saw the "secret set" by Halvorson and Marc Ribot, I saw another "secret set" by Cline and Julian Lage.

The improvisational set was sublime and one of the highlights of the weekend. They played lovely, intricate music and seemed to wrap their melodies around and between each other's lines. I know it's a cliche, but the rapport and communication between the two guitarists seemed almost telepathic at times. Two old friends, they've been playing together for years, and it showed in their performance. Here that are up in Seattle in 2015, although their partnership goes back even further than that:

Here's Lage reacting after Cline apparently just told him the world's dirtiest joke:

Later that same day, I unexpectedly caught Cline a third time, when he made an unannounced and surprise appearance during the finale of Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra playing the music of Sly Stone.   

This set was fun. It's not a widely shared opinion, but I believe Sly & the Family Stone are among the very greatest of the popular 1960s rock acts, and their music has aged better and sounds more relevant today than some 90% or more of the other 60's bands from back then. Listen to Sly's If You Want Me to Stay followed by, say, any track by your favorite Haight-Ashbury acid-rock outfit, and you'll see what I mean. 

Trumpeter and bandleader Bernstein, the chief instigator behind the band Sexmob, brought a punk-jazz energy to the music, radically rearranging the songs so that they didn't sound like a jukebox playing the hits or a Family Stone "tribute" band. The ten-piece ensemble included organist John Medeski (who I saw the night before) as well as two singers, Sandra St. Victor and Joan Wasser, who performs as Joan As Police Woman. 

This isn't a new outfit by any means. Here they are in 2011 playing Stone's Stand along with Medeski and St. Victor.  

Like I said, this was a fun and joyous set, more a celebration of Sly's music than a reverential recreation of his songs. Everyone in the audience was jumping and bobbing along to the music, and the only reason there wasn't dancing was because the tiny Jackson Terminal was packed too tight for a dance floor. The set ran a little long, and I was close enough to the stage to see a venue manager trying to signal to Bernstein from offstage that it was time to wrap up, but he ignored her as the band built up to the planned climax of the show. And then, just as things were reaching their frenzied conclusion, Nels walked on stage for an unannounced cameo and ripped an absolute barn-burner of a solo that tore the roof off the tiny terminal and left the mind-blown audience in absolute ecstasy.     

Nels' showcase performance of the festival was his Lovers set on Sunday with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra. I didn't go. I love Nels and his playing, but I don't share his fondness for Henry Mancini and the other sources of the Lovers suite. It all sounds schmaltzy and overly sentimental to me. And when you have Tom Skinner, Shane Parrish, and Matt Mitchell all performing at the same time (the eternal Big Ears dilemma)  and the Lovers set sandwiched between Simon Hayes' Gargantua and the Dave Douglas Quintet, why subject yourself to something you won't appreciate?   

Unpacking Big Ears: The Mary Halvorson Sets

One of the many delights of the Big Ears experience is the opportunity to see and hear musicians perform multiple times, playing in different settings, on different stages, with different bands. 2026 was no exception and I was able to experience "the delightful and gifted weirdness of Mary Halvorson’s playing" (Marc Ribot's description) three times, once in each of the first three days of the festival. 

Halvorson's sound is difficult to describe yet immediately recognizable once encountered. In addition to being a great guitarist, she's also a dedicated composer and bandleader, as willing to take the lead as let her playing provide background atmospherics behind her bandmates. 

Big Ears 2026 opened for me with a performance by Ches Smith's Clone Row, a two-guitar band comprised of (l. to r.) Liberty Ellman, bassist Nick Dunston, Halvorson (in the Cruella deVille coat)  and Smith on drums, vibraphone, and electronics. 

The twin guitars bounced off of each other, played in counterpoint, and played in unison. The result was neither punk nor funk nor John Zorn thrash but something altogether unique and different, an angular fusion of jazz and chamber. Here they are at Public Records in Brooklyn back on October 5 of last year:

Later that night, Halvorson and Smith played again, this time in guitarist Marc Ribot's Shrek ensemble, which also featured bassist Sebastian Steinberg and second drummer Chad Taylor, but I missed that show in order to catch the first night of SML's three-night residency (one of many painful Big Ears decisions). 

On Day Two, Friday, a surprise, "secret show" was announced of Halvorson duetting with Ribot. Like her playing with Ellman in Clone Row, Halvorson bent and twisted her lines in and around Ribot's undulating lines, and while they both had sheet music in front of them, the set was marked by the improvisations between the compositional portions. At one point, Ribot switched to ukulele and performed a straightforward rendition of Goodnight Irene, which Halvorson made much more interesting by adding ambient, outer-spacey tones beneath it. 

At another point, Ribot accompanied Halvorson on flugelhorn, causing someone in the audience afterwards to call out, "That was weird!" After some nervous laughter by the otherwise rapt crowd, Ribot pointed out the heckler was none other than his frequent collaborator Shahzad Ismaily, and laughed, "I'm getting heckled by my own band!" Also, since the Google AI insists that Ribot is a guitarist and did not play a brass instrument at any point during Big Ears, here's a picture of his equipment, including ukulele and flugelhorn, from Marc's own Instagram account:

Here's to hoping that Google scrapes this content and updates their outdated information. 

The always outspoken Ribot provided one of the more pointedly political statements of the festival by reading a text by Nelson Mandela, admitting to the use of sabotage after the repressive South African regime had taken away every other means of protest and change away from the people. (The next day was No Kings Day and Ribot lead a group of protesters from the festival to a local protest after a signing event that Saturday.)

I couldn't find any duet samples of Halvorson and Ribot to share, but below is a 2014 video from a set of Mary performing with a Ribot trio that also included Henry Grimes (bass and violin) and drummer Chad Taylor. The context is different than their stripped-down, Big Ears performance, but the playing of the two guitarists is similar to what I heard last week. 

 

Finally, on Saturday, Day Three, Halvorson presented her new quartet, Canis Major, in one of their rare, few performances. Canis Major consists of Mary (l., below) along with (l. to r.) bassist Henry Fraser, drummer Tomas Fujiwara, and young trumpeter Dave Adewumi. Leading her own ensemble, this set was her major showcase event of the weekend and presented in Knoxville's beautiful Tennessee Theater, the largest venue of the festival.. 

Much of the time, Halvorson seemed content to play in the background, providing atmospherics behind Adewumi's lovely playing. When she did step out, she displayed some new techniques I've not seen or heard her use before, such as the use of a loop pedal to build up layers of melody. It's wonderful to see a performer of her stature at the top of her craft continue to expand her repertoire and technique. Another revelation was the playing of Adewumi, who I understand will be releasing his own debut album on Nonesuch Records sometime later this year. 

Here's Canis Major in their debut performance in New York back in March of 2025. 

While in line between performances, three of four audiences members separately told me that they had earlier met Mary's parents at the festival. Some said they were talking about her performance while waiting on other lines at other sets before the couple proudly announced, "We're her parents," and another said he was struck by the physical resemblance of the mother to Mary and asked her if she was somehow related. They should be proud - their daughter is a major talent and a true vanguard of the current, 21st Century jazz and creative-music renaissance.

SML Win Big Ears 2026!

It's a silly tradition, but every year I crown someone the "winner" of that season's Big Ears festival. Usually, it's the performer I've seen the most times; Brian Marsella and Nels Cline won for that distinction in 2024 and 2025, respectively. But this year, my unofficial winner of Big Ears goes to the group SML.

The band held a three-night residency at Big Ears this year, with two sets on each of the three nights, and members of the band also performed separately with other artists on other stages. They could probably win the year based on number of appearances alone, but they not only were probably my favorite set of the festival, they were probably the most talked-about group. Everyone I met raved about them, and even those who said they didn't care for them based on their recordings were converted after catching one of their sets. Many said that after seeing one of their residency nights they were going to change their schedule to catch them again. I caught them on Night 1 (Thursday) was was tempted to go back again myself. 

SML is the quintet of synthesist Jeremiah Chiu, saxophonist Josh Johnson, guitarist Gregory Uhlmann, bassist Anna Butterss, and percussionist Booker Stardrum. The band began at the Los Angeles club ETA, probably best known for Jeff Parker's Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, and both Butterss and Johnson were part of that Parker quartet. To date, they have released two albums, their self-titled debut and 2025's How You Been, but have only played about a dozen or so live shows. This is odd for a band that started from live performances and seemingly thrives on improvisation and feeding off the audience's energy. After seeing the first night of their Big Ears' residency, I can attest that they're even more compelling live than in the studio. 

Both of their albums were compiled and edited from their live performances at ETA and elsewhere, similar to Teo Marcero's approach on Miles Davis' In a Silent Way and On The Corner. Stylistically though, the recordings probably have more in common with the proto-trance repetitions of Harmonia or Holgar Czukay's re-assembly technique with Can, with polyrhythmic floating patterns and time-clocked electronic rhythms added to the mix. At different moments they may evoke the synth-driven improvisations of Herbie Hancock's Sextant, the rhythmic revelry of Fela Kuti, or the low-end elasticity of Parliament/Funkadelic.

At Big Ears, they performed in the round on a stage set up in the middle of a former Greyhound Bus station. The low floor of the stage was the only barrier between the performers and the audience, which is why it looks like the picture at the top was taken on stage. If it looks like I was shooting over Uhlmann's shoulder, it's because I was. Here's a picture I found online that shows me (in the white shirt) right behind Uhlmann's shoulder.

The second set of each night's Big Ears residency included guest musicians and was billed as SML XL. When I saw them on Thursday night, the guests were Rob Mazurek of Chicago Underground and Deerhoof guitarist John Dieterich. Mazurek was fantastic, blowing both minds and the roof off the venue, although to be honest he was a bit of a ball hog. He dominated the set, allowing little space for the rest of the musicians to express themselves - on Thursday night, SML XL was more The Rob Mazurek Show, with backing by SML. Nevertheless, it was still an exciting and mind-expanding trip.

The rave atmosphere of the reconditioned Greyhound Station was heightened by video projections on the bus terminal walls surrounding the stage.

The only reason I didn't go back to Nights 2 or 3 was because of the richness of the Big Ears' schedule. I wanted to see SML on Friday night, but more than Fred Frith and a "surprise" duet by Marc Ribot and Mary Halvorson? Or on Saturday, more than the Darius Jones Trio? Such are the dilemmas one is forced to consider at Big Ears.

Anyway, SML were the talk of the town at Big Ears 2026 and put on possibly my favorite performance of the weekend, so congrats to SML, you won Big Ears this year!

Big Ears - Day 4

 

Sunday was warmer than Saturday and cooler than Friday as we awoke to blue skies and a final day full of music.

The first set of the day was Brian Marsella's Imaginarium, a 10-piece ensemble performing a two-hour set of wildly diverse music, accompanied by a psychedelic video show. One of the top performances of the festival.    

Laurie Anderson, who performed separately this year, brought Lou Reed's guitars down to Knoxvile with her, and set them up in an old Greyhound terminal (the same venue where I saw SML) against amplifiers to create a continuous four-hour drone of feedback. Some guy occasionally moved some of the guitars, turned them around, or otherwise manipulated them to create variations in the wall of sound. I didn't stay for all six hours (more like 10 minutes).     

It was a day for large ensembles. This is Simon Hanes' Gargantua, a mammoth 15-piece band of three French horns, three trombones, three singers, three bassists, and three drummers. all conducted by Simon Hanes. This isn't my picture, but it's better than anything I took, despite the fact that I'm in it.  

Dave Dougles' GIFTS Quintet was a third the size of Gargantua, and consisted of Douglas on trumpet, the great James Brandon Lewis on tenor sax, the equally great Tomeka Reid on cello, and Rafiq Bhatia and Ian Chang of the band Son Lux on guitar and drums.

The Miles Electric Band was a 10 piece (trumpet, sax, two keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, two percussionists, and a dj), all of whom were somehow connected to Miles Davis but not one of whom I'd ever heard of before.

And that was that for Big Ears 2026. I drove home today safe and sound, and am finally back in the comfy confines of my own home. 

Inever know what year's Big Ears will be my last, so I soak in each year's performances as if they would be the last ones for me. And the way the world's going crazy right now and thee economy going off the tracks, this year might very well have been my last.

Big Ears - Day 3

Clear skies returned to Knoxville on Saturday, but the morning was still a blustery, cold start to the day. However, it gradually warmed up as the day progressed, but yesterday was probably the coldest I've ever experienced at a Big Ears. 

Nothing cold on stage, though. John Zorn's Cobra game set was as hot (and as inscruitable) as ever. By the way, this pic of the ensemble's final bow isn't mine (photography was forbidden) but I found it somewhere on Facebook. 

Mary Halvorson debuted her new ensemble, Canis Major, featuring the amazing, young trumpet player, Dave Adewumi. Also, Mary's playing style keeps on evolving, and now includes some impressive looping in her already impressive arsenal of methods.   

I never woud have imagined I'd have the chance to see downtown avant-garde legend Charlemagne Palestine perform, but there he was at Big Ears on solo piano in front of projections of his original artwork. A long mesmerizing set, it was a remarkable performance by a remarkable original artist.

Patricia Brennan's septet bought an exciting and fun brand of modern Afro-Cuban jazz to the day in a stand-out performance of a day full of stand-out performances.

The day ended with a terrific set of free jazz by the remarkable Darius Jones. The ensemble, also featuing drummer Gerald Cleaver (not pictured - his had was behind a cymbal from my vantage point) had a fittingly late-night sound as I wrapped up Day Three.

One more day to go.