BIG EARS FESTIVAL 2017 Knoxville Tennesee 23.-26.03.2017 Ohren auf!

2009 startete in Knoxville im US-Bundesstaat Tennesee ein Festival, was alle noch offene Ohren plus Hörer musikalisch sprengen sollte.
Ohne inhaltliche Kompromisse, ohne kommerzielle Zwänge treffen beim Big Ears Festival komponierte, improvisierte und populäre Musik quer aufeinander. Wahrscheinlich dürfte Big Ears das bedeutendste Festival für Avantgarde weltweit sein.
Und da die beste Begleiterin unbedingt My Brightest Diamond endlich mal live erleben wollte (die NL-Termine Anfang März passten nicht), die Magnetic Fields tief im Herzen verankert sind https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fllQTBPDalk), Xiu Xiu, Supersilent, Wilco, Tortoise, Meridith Monk, Matmos, Matana Roberts, Colin Stetson, Philipp Jeck und Gavin Bryars Titanic-Versenkung schwer anlocken, gehts halt kurzfristig zum Big Ears Festival 2017. Vier lange Tage & Nächte (23.-26.03.2017) volles Programm mit über 100 Acts auf 8 Bühnen, alle in Downtown Knoxville, alles unbeschwert zu erlaufen, mehr geht wohl kaum!
Doch wo sollte man unbedingt hin – bei dem Knaller-Programm?
Hier ein Überblick über das Festival (wohl 8.000 Hörer anwesend? Festivalpass 165-550 Dollar/wir haben den Günstigsten mal gebucht) und das umfangreiche Line Up:
http://bigearsfestival.com/
http://lineup.bigearsfestival.com/
ein kleines Filmchen über 2016 zur schönen Einstimmung:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmPSArEOn2Y

Am 23.03.17 gehts dann hoffentlich locker (ohne Riesenschlangen) los.
Unbedingt ansehen und fest geplant sind zum Warm-Up-Startschuss u. a. die unglaubliche Matana Roberts.
siehe hier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbNKUAy0Qik
Matana Roberts is an internationally renowned composer, bandleader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixed-media practitioner. The New York-based artist works in many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, dance, poetry, and theater. She made two records as a core member of the Sticks And Stones quartet in the early 2000s and has gone on to release a diverse body of solo and ensemble work under her own name over the past decade. The self-taught mixed media composer will also collaborate with independent filmmaker Jem Cohen for a Big Ears-specific version of his project Gravity Hill Sound+Image, which explores films and live soundtracks in a variety of combinations. Roberts is best known for her acclaimed 2011 series COIN COIN, a multi-chapter work of “panoramic sound quilting” that aims to expose the mystical roots and channel the intuitive spirit-raising traditions of American creative expression, pieces of which she’ll incorporate her Big Ears performance.

Dave Harington Group (bekannt vielleicht von Nicolas Jaar)
Krautrock meets Elecronic?
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_ZlRN6qn0M

Ahleuchatistas
Siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=Wbknnm-fQ8g
Könnte sehr intensiv werden ....
Since 2002, Ahleuchatistas has been making music that sounds like little else emanating from the mountains of their Asheville, North Carolina home, or indeed, anywhere else. Starting as a trio, the band was soon paired down to the duo of guitarist Shane Parish and drummer Ryan Oslance. Yet somehow the two often manage to sound like a much larger band. Tuneful melodies collide with experimental detours as Parish makes the most of his fretboard and pedals and Oslance fuses rock beats and jazz polyrhythms.
Having released a number of albums on evergreen avant garde houses Cuneiform and Tzadik, their latest album, Arrebeto, teams them with International Anthem, a new Chicago-based label committed to cutting edge jazz and impro. You might not remember how to pronounce their name, a mashup of Charlie Parker’s “Ah-Leu-Cha” and Zapatistas, but you’ll never forget their performance.

US-Opa-Folk mit Michael Hurley
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnxQ1uh354Q
Though Michael Hurley was a fixture in Greenwich Village folk clubs and recorded his first album for Folkways, he never really fit in with most musicians who came out of the 1960s American folk boom. He was, and remains, too offbeat, laid-back, whimsical and unpredictable to be placed in any category. Like his friends Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of Holy Modal Rounders, with whom he recorded 1976’s seminal Have Moicy! album, Hurley respected American folk tradition too much to ever let it calcify by playing it po-faced.
The mood of Hurley’s songs can be by turns playful, ribald, bittersweet, lonesome, old fashioned or anarchic, but they are unmistakably the sound of someone enjoying life. His kinship to the music of the old, weird America found on Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music made him a sort of godfather to New Weird American acts like Jackie-O Motherfucker and Sunburned Hand of the Man; a tour with Son Volt and recordings of his songs by Cat Power further introduced him to new audiences. In the last few years he’s released a series of albums on Mississippi Records that suggest a newfound period of creativity and energy. With a personality and music as colorful as the illustrations that adorn his album covers, the man also known as Snock shows no signs of slowing down in his 75th year.

Sarah Kirkland Snider
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hISqm7Sju8
Following the critical acclaim that greeted her 2010 album Penelope, a song cycle seen through the eyes of Odysseus’s wife, Sarah Kirkland Snider returns with a work no less enchanting, Unremembered. Taking inspiration from his youth in rural New England, poet Nathaniel Bellows has created a libretto that evokes the mysteries, fears and innocence of childhood, taking cues from folk songs, fables, fairy tales and naturalist settings. Snider’s haunting score offers sympathetic accompaniment to Bellow’s words, underscoring the narration and mood of the text. Though based in an imaginary gothic past, Unremembered is ultimately about how the fearful fantasies of childhood foreshadow and hopefully prepare us for the real challenges of adulthood. Bringing so much life to Penelope, Shara Nova of My Brightest Diamond once again gives voice to Snider’s music, this time joined by Padme Newsome of Clogs, Asthmatic Kitty recording artist DM Stith, and boundary-pushing Brooklyn orchestra The Knights. Straddling the line between classical and chamber pop, Unremembered is further proof that Snider is one of the most fearless, original voices in new music today.

Frode Haltli
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLPd0HiUQTs
Frode Haltli revealed himself to be a prodigy of the accordion when he picked it up at the age of seven. At a young age, he won several competitions and prizes in his native Norway, and has continued to do so as he enters his forties, now holding a teaching position at the Norwegian Academy of Music. In addition to playing traditional Norwegian folk music, Haltli’s playing turns up in places many people might not expect, such as new music ensembles, traditional classical music orchestras and jazz groups. With his latest work, Grenesekoge (or The Border Woods), Haltli performs with percussion and the hurdy-gurdy-like Swedish nyckelharpa, linking Nordic folk music to Indian and Arabic scales, creating an entirely new kind of world music. In addition to his genre-bending work Grenesekoge, Haltli will deliver a solo set for festival fans.

Natürlich My Brightest Diamond
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CePpTXIuQzY
For many festival goers, My Brightest Diamond turned out to be one of the surprise highlights of 2010’s Big Ears. (Frontwoman Shara Nova’s comment about the Spanish-Moorish design of the Tennessee Theatre proved equally memorable: “When people ask what my favorite place to play is, I tell them about this place. It’s like playing inside an Easter egg.”) Though not as high-profile as her friends and collaborators The National or Sufjan Stevens, Nova and company turned in a dazzling performance that won her many new fans. Now she’s returning to Big Ears, singing in Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Unremembered song cycle and performing a My Brightest Diamond set.

Nova’s voice has graced music by Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, The Decemberists, David Lang and others, but it shines brightest in her own compositions for My Brightest Diamond. Her background in opera and classical music is apparent throughout her work, but the influence of indie rock and electronic music are equally felt. It’s all augmented by Nova’s unique visual presence, which adds narrative and emotional heft to her songs.

DakhaBrakha
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsNKSbTNd5I
assembled in 2004 by avant garde theatre director Vladyslav Troitskyi, DakhaBrakha is a quartet from Kyiv dedicated to preserving Ukranian folk culture. The group travels across their home country to hear and learn from music traditions that are hanging on in rapidly changing times, chasing a “Ukranian blues” to create their self-described “ethno chaos.” DakhaBrahka have brought this music to stages around the world, adding their own original take on it by incorporating Indian, Arabic, African, Russian and Australian traditional instrumentation. The group retains a unique visual presence held over from their theatrical origins, dressed in traditional Ukranian attire and incorporating a new setting into each performance. DakhaBrahka means “give/take” in Ukranian, and you get the sense it’s perfectly chosen, as they disseminate the folk culture of their homeland while learning from every new encounter and performance.

Ins Wasser fallen werden wahrscheinlich am ersten Tag:
Carla Bley Trio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMvkM2s8xv4
Blonde Redhead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNio2xDwTYg
Anna Meridith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92o2Qci6ozo
Lisa Moore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnr0Rlvhx04
und noch ein paar weitere Acts ....
und dann kommen schon die ganz dicken Brocken am Freitag ....

am Freitag knallst dann wohl kompakt an allen Ecken, wohl begutachtet werden (falls möglich):
die Wüsten-Tuaregs Imarhan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ek1BqoZHRE
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8vOoHkCRD4
One of the most exciting musical imports in recent years is the deluge of Tuareg “desert rock” bands who have released albums and toured Western nations. Combining blues-based rock with the music from the various Saharan nations in which the Tuareg people live, groups such as Tinariwen have captured the ear of the world. The Algerian sextet Imarhan is firmly in the Tuareg tradition - frontman Sadam has played in Tinariwen - but have added more pronounced Western influences to their songs. It’s not exactly Tuareg goes pop (unlike some contemporary peers, they don’t use Autotune or electronic beats) but there’s no question there’s less frayed edges to their music than that present in groups like Doueh or Inerane, and they show more of a folk influence than Tinariwen. They even choose to perform in leather jackets and jeans rather than the traditional robes and veils many Tuareg bands prefer. Still playing wedding and festival gigs near their home city of Tamanrasset, they have also appeared on stages around the world. Thought they’ve been together since 2008, in 2016 they released their self-titled debut album, which won rave reviews and opened up a new chapter in the history of Tuareg music.

Meridith Monk
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl0ObBTq1rQ
Meredith Monk recently celebrated her 50th year as a performing artist with a series of concerts and residency at Carnegie Hall. One of the most challenging and unpredictable American artists of the last half century, she seems equally comfortable as a composer, singer, filmmaker, dancer and choreographer, working with vocal groups, music theatre, opera and symphony orchestras. The recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant and a 2015 National Medal of Arts, she is best known for her extended vocal techniques, taking singing beyond the confines of traditional methods of elocution and intonation to create vocal music unlike any other. Her compositions often incorporate unexpected instrument combinations, and might call for for one voice or 150. Taking cues from minimalism’s use of repetition and layering, she founded the Vocal Ensemble in 1978. At Big Ears, Monk and a quartet version of the Vocal Ensemble will perform “The Soul’s Messenger,” showcasing pieces from some of her most celebrated works, such as Atlas, Mercy and Dolmen Music.

Jóhann Jóhannsson’s 'Drone Mass' feat. ACME & Theatre of Voices
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmicG4wZDiM
celandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson has had a fruitful career composing soundtracks for films such as The Theory of Everything, Arrival and the upcoming Blade Runner sequel, but he has also produced a large body of work independent of film. His albums have appeared on such taste making labels as 4AD, Touch and FatCat, his most recent work Orphee finding a home on the world’s oldest record label, classical music lynchpin Deutsche Grammaphone. Jóhannsson’s music can be icily minimal or lushly romantic, taking inspiration from unpredictable sources such as the natural beauty of the Antarctic peninsula, the ancient myth of Orpheus or the user’s manual for an early IBM computer.
At Big Ears, Jóhannsson will be joined by the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, Theatre of Voices, and conductor Donato Cabrera to present his 2015 composition Drone Mass, based on the Coptic Gospel of the Egyptians. Contained within this Gnostic Gospel, one of the manuscripts discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945, is a hymn comprised of a string of worldless vowel sounds. Not as loud or heavy as other drone-based artists or works of recent vintage, it is instead a rather solemn and contemplative work for string quartet, voices, and low-pitched electronic drones.

Magnetic Fields
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=XoAydx7Anuc
While Magnetic Fields are nominally an indie rock act, no contemporary pop songwriter has a more direct line to the Great American Songbook than frontman Stephen Merritt. He has more in common with classic tunesmiths and dazzling lyricists like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter than with his modern peers. After a string of albums that stood apart in the catalogs of the indie labels on which they appeared, Merritt turned in the watershed 69 Lovesongs trilogy, taking his songwriting and career to a new level. His lyrics can be charming, disarming and withering, often within the same song, and his gift for melody inspires as much envy as admiration. Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 50 Song Memoir finds Merritt revisiting each year of his half century on earth in song. You’ll probably find some parts of his life more relatable than others, as he sings about such things as “bedbugs, Buddhism, buggery, hippies, Hollywood, and hyperacusis,” with a wit and turn of phrase only he can deliver. The band will perform two nights, 25 songs each night.

The Crossing w/ Prism perform Gavin Bryars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiMHOJWxeZw
One of the foremost American choral ensembles working today, Philadelphia’s The Crossing have presented numerous commissions and world premieres since their formation a decade ago. At Big Ears, the chamber choir will be performing two works, Gavin Bryars’ The Fifth Century and David Lang’s The Little Match Girl Passion.
Beginning his music career in the legendary British improv scene of the 1960s, Gavin Bryars soon took to composing such minimalist milestones as The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, both comprising the debut release of Brian Eno’s Obscure Records in 1975. Since that time Bryars has composed more than two dozen works, the most recent of which is The Fifth Century. With a text based on 17th Century theologian poet Thomas Traherne’s book Centuries of Meditations, it will be performed with the Prism Saxophone Quartet. Mr. Bryars will also be attending the festival, and performing.

The Quavers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?…ontinue=127&v=noeWEEVQWmk
Brooklyn trio The Quavers coax a luminous sound out of decayed samplers, foot pedal loopers, tape echo violins, vibraphonette, and homespun harmonies. Like a space-age Carter family, T. Griffin (guitar/electronics), Catherine McRae (violin), and Dennis Cronin (trumpet/percussion) weave low-tech electronics around songs sturdy enough to stand up even if the power goes out. Their intimately cinematic 2012 album, Fell Asleep on a Train is a set of snapshots of lives lived out of suitcases, even at home. It was recorded in Brooklyn and Montreal with members of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Vic Chesnutt's band. As a sideline to songwriting and playing with The Quavers, Griffin has built a strong reputation as a sonically adventurous film composer. He has steadily turned out distinctively atmospheric scores for narrative and documentary films, many going into wide independent release. In addition to their performance with The Quavers, Griffin and McRae will join forces with independent filmmaker Jem Cohen at Big Ears 2017 for a special Gravity Hill Sound+Image performance, exploring films and live soundtracks in a wide range of combinations.

Matmos perform Robert Ashley's 'Perfect Lives (Private Parts)'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQHXVkXu2Us
ou’re not likely to forget the first time you hear Private Parts. Robert Ashley’s recording cast a spell on listeners upon its release in 1979, and continues to enchant, and occasionally bewilder, those who discover it decades later. Throughout both sides of the record, “The Park” and “The Backyard,” “Blue” Gene Tyranny emits washes of eerily calm synthesizer under his rippling piano figures, while Krishna Bhatt’s tabla adds a rhythmic South Asian sensibility. Above it all floats Ashley’s cool, gentle voice, issuing a mixture of fractured narrative, quasi-koans, everyday mysticism and existential reflections. It later became absorbed into Ashley’s seven-part television opera Perfect Lives, a groundbreaking work that has recently been revived by Varispeed Collective and Matmos.
It’s difficult to imagine taking on a recording that is so closely identified with the original performers, and Matmos wisely chose the route of interpretation over a “cover.” The duo of Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt, renowned for their creative reconfiguring of sounds (their latest album was sourced entirely from recordings of a washing machine), have added electronics, back-up vocalists, bamboo flutes and strings to what was a relatively minimalist work. Matmos have acknowledged Ashley as a major inspiration, and their performance of Private Parts is a fitting tribute to the composer, who passed away in 2014.

Vielleicht bleibt noch Zeit & Raum für Tortoise, Wilco und zahlreiche weitere Acts wie Coleen, Richard Teitelbaum, Nils Økland Band, Claire Chase, American Contemporary Music Ensemble, Frederic Rzewski, Alvin Curran, Yuki Numata Resnick, Lætitia Sadier, Theatre of Voices, Nief-Norf etc., bis dann der ominöse Samstag schon vor der Tür steht ....

wie so oft bei einem mehrtägigen Festival - der Samstag rockt und wird gewaltig! Und da wird es wirklich schwierig (aus all den zahlreichen Acts), eine Auswahl zu treffen.
Auflaufen und wahrscheinlich angeschaut werden:

Colin Stetson presents 'Sorrow': A Reimagining of Gorecki's 3rd Symphony
siehe hier (genialer Video!!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNAMfF4QB0g
Henryk Górecki’s 3rd Symphony, composed in 1977, became an unlikely popular success following the 1992 million-selling recording featuring soprano Dawn Upshaw. The sweeping grandeur of the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs has such an undeniable emotive pull that it soon started turning up in numerous films. You’ve probably heard a portion of it, knowingly or not. Fortunately the work is powerful enough to retain its allure even were it to underscore every cinematic plane crash from here on. The Polish text for the symphony’s three movements concerns the separation of children from their mothers, but one need not understand the language to understand the sorrow and loss that is expressed in the music.
Recently, multi-reedist Colin Stetson recorded a “reimagining” of Gorecki’s 3rd, accompanied by a 10-piece ensemble which often includes violinist Sarah Neufeld of Arcade Fire, drummer Greg Fox of Liturgy and his sister Megan Stetson’s powerful vocals. Lest you be tempted to think so without giving it a listen, this is a far cry from indie rockers punching above their weight; Stetson and company remain faithful to the score and deliver a rendition of this work as moving as any out there. In addition to releasing a half dozen albums under his own name, the in-demand Stetson can be found on recordings by Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, Tom Waits and many others.

Xiu Xiu Plays the Music of 'Twin Peaks
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7b2NdNewFI
It makes perfect sense Stewart would be a fan of Twin Peaks. David Lynch’s incomparable series was the darkest show to ever air on network television, but also exhibited a goofy sense of humor and concern with morality. Originally commissioned for performances at a Lynch retrospective at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Stewart and bandmates Shayna Dunkelman and Angela Seo recorded selections from Angelo Badalamenti’s music from the Twin Peaks series and film. Their goth pop take is a perfect fit. As Stewart told the New Yorker, “We wanted our band to be like Twin Peaks. It’s very romantic, but also terrifying. It’s incredibly funny, but metaphysical. It’s darkly sexual, but also kind of cute.”

The Magnetic Fields: ‘Fifty Song Memoir’ mit neuer 5-fach-LP-Box am Start
genialer Vorgeschmack - siehe hier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?…0QPHYQ310tI&v=dtWw_w9loIU

While Magnetic Fields are nominally an indie rock act, no contemporary pop songwriter has a more direct line to the Great American Songbook than frontman Stephen Merritt. He has more in common with classic tunesmiths and dazzling lyricists like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and Cole Porter than with his modern peers. After a string of albums that stood apart in the catalogs of the indie labels on which they appeared, Merritt turned in the watershed 69 Lovesongs trilogy, taking his songwriting and career to a new level. His lyrics can be charming, disarming and withering, often within the same song, and his gift for melody inspires as much envy as admiration. Commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 50 Song Memoir finds Merritt revisiting each year of his half century on earth in song. You’ll probably find some parts of his life more relatable than others, as he sings about such things as “bedbugs, Buddhism, buggery, hippies, Hollywood, and hyperacusis,” with a wit and turn of phrase only he can deliver. The band will perform two nights, 25 songs each night.

Yasmine Hamdan, die Queen des Mittleren Ostens - mit den wundervollen Video von Jim Jarmusch "Hal" - dicke Empfehlung!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDepIDGKC2U

(Jasmine Hamdan (arabisch ياسمين حمدان‎; * 1976 in Beirut) ist eine libanesische Sängerin, Songwriterin und Schauspielerin. Sie hat die erste Independent-Band (Soapkills) des Nahen Ostens gegründet und wurde durch diese zunächst „Underground-Ikone Libanons“[2] und dann in der gesamten arabischen Welt bekannt. Ihre Zusammenarbeit mit dem Madonna-Produzenten Mirwais unter dem Namen Y.A.S. sowie mit den Weird-Folk-Schwestern von CocoRosie brachten ihr Anerkennung in Europa und den USA.

Yamsine Hamdan caught the attention of many Americans with her appearance in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, performing the song “Hal” in a Moroccan cafe. No doubt some viewers rushed out to buy the soundtrack after hearing it. The Lebanese singer was already well-known in the Middle East and in hipper European enclaves, as half of the underground electronic duo Soap Kills. Adding trip-hop production to songs rooted in classical Arab music, Soap Kills’ sound was a striking meeting of old and new. Having lived in Lebanon, Kuwait, Greece and Abu Dhabi, Hamdan decamped to Paris in 2002, where she formed the duo Y.A.S. with Madonna collaborator Mirwais. In 2012, Hamdan released her first solo album Ya Nass, retaining Arabic folk influences while exhibiting more of an interest in contemporary pop. Possessing an arresting voice, you don’t need to understand the various Arab dialects in which she sings to revel in the emotion and passion of Hamdan’s performance.

Live Improvised Score to 'No Country For Old Men' Feat. Dave Harrington Group

Glenn Kotche (Wilco Schlagzeuger)
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwekSyWxcgg
For a percussionist and composer as energetic, inquisitive and versatile as Glenn Kotche, it’s his sense of balance—his ability to thrive in different and seemingly disparate worlds—that really makes him stand out as a musician.
Since 2001, Kotche has been the rhythmic anchor in Wilco, one of the most beloved rock bands on the planet. His first studio outing with the Chicago-based band was the breakthrough Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and has continued over the course of five albums, including the Grammy-winning A Ghost Is Born and the critically acclaimed The Whole Love. He has appeared on over 80 recordings by artists as diverse as Andrew Bird, Edith Frost, Neil Finn and Radiohead’s Phil Selway, and he’s a founding member of two other bands— Loose Fur, with Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy and longtime collaborator Jim O’Rourke, and On Fillmore, with upright bassist Darin Gray. He has also written music for classical and post-classical ensembles like Kronos Quartet, the Silk Road Ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, So Percussion, eighth blackbird and many more.

Philip Jeck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z50ZPTrft1g
Philip Jeck uses turntables to make music, but he most certainly does not sound like a DJ. Nor does he sound much like John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer, Christian Marclay or other early adopters who treated record players as instruments. In addition to vintage turntables, Jeck employs Casio SK1 sampling keyboards, minidisc players, a laptop and bass guitar to sculpt an immersive world of sound that flirts with ambient and noise. With a background in visual arts, Jeck is drawn to work with dance and theatre companies, and has composed several soundtracks. The British musician has performed with the dream rhythm section of Jah Wobble and Jaki Leibezeit, and participated in a remarkable rendition of Gavin Bryars’ Sinking of the Titanic.

Gavin Bryars Ensemble
siehe hier im Schwimmbad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkfJVTPV-Ps
Composer and double bassist Gavin Bryars began his career in the fertile British jazz scene of the 1960s, playing in a group with guitarist Derek Bailey and drummer Tony Oxley. The trio brought an innovative approach to improvisation, a more spontaneous and radical approach than even their contemporaries in the United States. Bryars soon moved into composing, and his first two works, The Sinking of the Titanic and Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, have become minimalist classics. He has since written more than two dozen compositions for a wide variety of instrumentation, including works for dance and four operas, and formed the Gavin Bryars Ensemble to perform them. The Ensemble’s appearance at Big Ears marks their debut American performance.

Supersilent
siehe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B68kAfdJpbY
Supersilent might be that rare thing, a relatively obscure supergroup. In the world of Scandinavian ambient and jazz, the members are highly regarded in this trio and in their individual careers. Trumpet player Arve Henriksen has recorded a number of highly distinctive albums that place his evocative, high-pitched playing out front. As Deathprod, Helge Sten was a pioneer of dark ambient electronics, while also being an occasional member of his wife and Big Ears alum Susanna’s band. Keyboardist Ståle Storløkken has played with a broad array of Norwegian jazz and rock musicians.

Auf der Strecke bleiben wahrscheinlich am Samstag Roedelius (Ex Cluster/Harmonia), Musica Elettronica Viva (Alvin Curran, Richard Teitelbaum, & Frederic Rzewski), Deerhoof, Henry Grimes, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble: The Soul’s Messenger, The Crossing performs David Lang, Joan Shelley, Steve Lehman & Sélébéyone, Cup (Nels Cline & Yuka C. Honda), Six Organs of Admittance, Horse Lords, Sir Richard Bishop (Ex Sun City Girls), White Magic, Six Organs of Admittance, Bobby Kapp & Matthew Shipp und und und ....

zum Sonntags-Abschluss wird dann noch locker ausgeschwingt - u.a. mit den genialen XIU XIU:
die neue Platte erscheint am 22.02.2017 und kann extrem günstig über den Deutschland-Vertrieb per pre-order aktuell noch bestellt werden
http://shop.altinvillage.de/product/xiu-xiu-forget
vorab einhörbar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shqEHhiZdys

Rangda (Ex-Sun City Girls)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=18&v=R_jbmgc4R7A
Taking their name from a Balinese demon queen who feasts on children, Rangda is the explosive trio of guitarists Sir Richard Bishop and Ben Chasny and drummer Chris Corsano. Chasny is best known for his acclaimed psychedelic folk project Six Organs of Admittance, and further displayed his acoustic and electric guitar skills in groups such as Current 93 and Comets on Fire. Corsano has played with a mind-boggling number of top-shelf improv and jazz musicians, and even had a role in Bjork’s Volta album and tour. Both have numerous recordings and road miles under their belts, but they’re babes in the woods compared with Bishop, who spent over 25 years turning on—and freaking out—audiences in the inimitable Sun City Girls before traveling the world as a solo guitarist. Nominally an improv group, Rangda’s three albums for Drag City contain plenty of stretched out, exploratory excursions, but there are also tightly executed power trio workouts built around riffs. Both Bishop and Chasny are well-versed in Indian and Middle Eastern music, adding a twist to more familiar rock forms, and Corsano can switch from Keith Moon heaviness to Milford Graves deftness and back at a moment’s notice. As their latest album, Heretic’s Bargain, proves, they just keep getting better.

Junun featuring Shye Ben Tzur and The Rajasthan Express (Indische Mucke)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=5IQdsIUfnAA
Surely no one saw this musical meeting coming. The 19-piece Indian ensemble Rajasthan Express serves as the backing band for a suite of songs by Israeli singer and composer Shye Ben Tzur, with Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood adding rhythm guitar, bass, keyboards, and drum-programming. Imagine what that collaboration might sound like, then forget it. You’re probably still not close. The project was unlikely enough a collaboration to warrant a documentary by Paul Thomas Anderson. Greenwood has stated that he didn’t want to be another rock dude dabbling in “world music,” and everyone assembled has gone out of their way to produce an east-meets-west album that defies expectations. With lyrics in Urdu, Hindi, and Hebrew, and music drawing from Sufi qawwali, ancient Manganiar court music, a lively brass band and Greenwood’s modern additions, Junun is a joyful album celebrating the spirit and music of several seemingly disparate cultures that have more in common than you might think.

Jeremy Gara (Arcade Fire)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRrEyPgeGUo

Oliver Coates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIdJ5eUQBHY
It’s very likely you’ve heard Oliver Coates music without realizing it. The cellist can be heard on Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool, Jonny Greenwood’s soundtracks for There Will Be Blood and The Master, as well as tracks by Actress, MF DOOM and Massive Attack. Remain Calm, his collaboration with Mica Levi, finds the pair exploring further ambient atmospherics akin to Levi’s mesmeric soundtrack for Under the Skin, on which Coates played. His latest solo album, Upstepping, is an electronic dance record composed entirely of sounds from his cello and vocal samples, a soundscape where Arthur Russell’s World of Echo meets Squarepusher. Like Russell, Coates deftly brings his classical training to bear on contemporary pop and dance music, and has even performed Russell’s minimalist epic Tower of Meaning with the London Contemporary Orchestra. Winner of the Royal Philharmonic Young Society award, he is also artist in residence at the Southbank Centre. At Big Ears, audiences will have a chance to see Coates reproduce Upstepping live, as well as a recital of contemporary compositions.

und zum krönenden Abschluss wird dann die glorreiche Titanic durch Gavin Bryars noch einmal komplett versenkt:
https://vimeo.com/198615408

alle Infos:
http://bigearsfestival.com

wer noch kurzfristig Lust aufs Big Ears Festival bekommen haben sollte - Direktflüge nach Atlanta (Delta, KLM, Air France) 470-650 Euro zirka, Leihwagen zirka 25 Euro am Tag, 3-Stunden Fahrt geradeaus über die I 75 von Atlanta nach Knoxville, 4-Tage Festivalpass 165 Dollar, Unterkunft Knoxville (Hotels Downtown leider 120-140 Dollar oder Motels/zirka 4 Meilen entfernt 35-70 Euro) oder über Airbnb, wo wir ein schönes Südstaaten-Häuschen des Bluegrass Musikers und Radio-Djs Curly Dan Bailey gefunden haben, der in der Grand Ol' Opry oftmals spielte und mit Dolly Parton tourte, die dort auch einige Zeit vor Ort weilte. Nen ansprechenden German Biergarten gibts auch direkt um die Ecke, die Schulz-Brewery http://schulzbraubrewing.com/s…wing-company/#prettyPhoto
Infos Unterkünfte:
https://www.airbnb.de
Special rates for Big Ears People - siehe: http://events.hotelsforhope.co…5879.752664185.1486504801