Big Star Quintet, Wednesday, Many More Set for Big Ears 2027

The lineup for the Knoxville fest runs the gamut from rock to jazz to experimental electronics and beyond, with a slew of Nashville connections

Color photograph of a live performance on multiple marimbas during Big Ears — Big Ears
Photo by Ashli Linkous, courtesy of Big Ears

Big Ears Festival, a few hours to the east of us in Knoxville, routinely brings together some of the most thoughtful and creative artists across a massive range of traditions and disciplines. The fest is set to return April 1 through 4, and its initial lineup features the kind of kaleidoscopic array of intriguing music fans have come to love.

Just on the first couple lines of the poster, you have Big Star Quintet, the latest incarnation of the hugely influential Memphis power-pop band; jazz-schooled piano maestro Brad Mehldau; the Royal Quartet of Cuban jazz icon Chucho Valdés; Aussie rock queen Courtney Barnett; and legendarily innovative producer-engineer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel Lanois. Among others sharing the top portion of the bill are master country songsmith Rosanne Cash, art-pop aces Weyes Blood and indie rock stars Wednesday (whose frontwoman Karly Hartzman will also be playing solo events during the fest). Dinner Party is there too, featuring a collaboration between contemporary jazz visionaries Robert Glasper and Kamasi Washington with hip-hop luminaries Terrace Martin and 9th Wonder.

Poster featuring the 2027 lineup of Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN

Special presentations, residencies and thematically connected gig series abound. Those include a 40th anniversary celebration for contemporary classical ensemble Bang on a Can and a 75th birthday celebration for free-jazz bass legend William Parker (including no fewer than five of his bands). Guitarist extraordinaire Bill Frisell has a residency, and there’s a curated suite of events organized by Melvin Gibbs called How Black Music Took Over the World. And you can catch a showcase of contemporary boundary-pushing pedal-steel music called Chrome Universal curated by Nashville’s own Luke Schneider.

As ever, the lineup is broad and deep. A few other things that jump out include Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet — Parker you may know as a founding member of post-rock heroes Tortoise — as well as sets from Meat Puppets, Melvins, Bedouine, Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples and the great Valerie June. Roberto Carlos Lange (Helado Negro) and Fabi Reyna’s (Reyna Tropical, She Shreds magazine) collaborative project Helado Tropical is coming. Petra Haden is going to sing some King Crimson songs. U.S. Girls, whose most recent work has been with a band of great Nashvillians and Nashville ex-pats, will be there too. Separately ticketed events include shows from Nathaniel Rateliff, Norah Jones and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (doing their tribute to the Dead’s 1980 live acoustic double LP Reckoning).

As ever, Big Ears offers something like a year’s worth of fascinating sets — some of which you might not see outside metropolises like New York, L.A. or Chicago — all within a few blocks of each other over one weekend. Previous ticket-buyers get access a day early, but tickets go on sale to the general public at 9 a.m. Eastern (8 a.m. Central) on Wednesday, Sept. 16.