Big Ears Festival kicks off to big crowds

Harold DuckettOur Town Arts

Despite bad weather in the Northeast disrupting travel for both performers and Big Ears attendees this week, the Big Ears Festival kicked off to large crowds in downtown Knoxville Thursday.

Thursday’s headlining event, Nels Cline’s “Lovers,” with the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra at Thursday evening, was cancelled because Cline and others involved couldn’t get to town in time for rehearsals.

But Big Ears, which draws both performers and audience from around the world, kicked off on-time with opening ceremonies at Visit Knoxville Visitors Center. Children from the Joy of Music School and the Community School for the Arts performed, along with some of the artists in this year’s concerts lineup.

Within Big Ears, a jazz festival and bluegrass/Appalachian music festival big enough to attract their own audiences with impressive lists of performers are also happening.

The concert schedule for the weekend began at noon. By the evening concerts, large crowds filled the venues.

At the Mill and Mine at the 6:30 show, four musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble performed gifted young Icelandic composer, Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s “In the Light of Air.”

Positioned in the middle of the floor under lighting that shifted with the music, the crowd, seated 10 deep on the floor and standing 8-10 deep behind them listened intently to Thorvaldsdottir’s ethereal sounds played by piano, viola, cello and harp, punctuated with percussion instruments that were struck with mallets or bowed to produce chilling, ice-cold patterns. The effect was like sitting in cavern inside an iceberg listening to the frozen mass breathe, creek and move.

At The Standard, steel guitar virtuoso, Susan Alcorn, performing to a large crowd standing up against the stage and 15 deep, took her instrument to places the traditional country music component has never been before.

Along with other explorations, she played her mesmerizing arrangement of French composer Olivier Messiaen’s 1964 “Et Exspecto Ressurectionem Mortuorum,” a sacred composition commemorating the dead of the two World Wars.

Guitarist Christopher Bruce and singer Me’Shell Ndegeocello at the Tennessee Theatre.

At the Tennessee Theatre, well over 1000, listened to American singer-songwriter, rapper and bass player, Me’Shell Ndegeocello, along with guitarist Christopher Bruce, sing her very personal songs of confessions, love and friendship.

Later, at St. John’s Cathedral, a large crowd filled the sanctuary to hear the avant-garde string quartet, Brooklyn Rider, who commentators have called “one of the wonders of contemporary music.”

Violinists, Colin Jacobsen and Jonathan Gandelsman, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist  Michael Nicolas’ extended playing techniques included the squeeks, squeals and harmonics, we have become adjusted to hearing in contemporary music, but also thumping their instrument bodies and bowing the sides to produce sounds older classical music never dreamed of.

Brooklyn Rider String Quartet; violinist Colin Jacobsen; cellist Michael Nicolas; violist Nicholas Cords; and violinist Jonathan Gandelsman, at St. Johns Cathedral.

They played music from their new recording, “Spontaneous Symbols,” beginning with Tyondai Braxton’s 2015 “ArpRec 1a.” With its streams of arpeggios and constant motion, it was also brittle, skittering and more than a little polemical.

Whatever sounds they are making, Brooklyn Rider’s intense commitment to precision turns the must abrasive noises into appealing music that stretches the boundaries.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *