The Ant Garden, 24th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): One thing old Angus MacLise would never have anticipated was the four-day Big Ears music festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. I firmly believe MacLise would have appreciated and enjoyed it, and participated in it with his friends Lou Reed and John Cale and La Mont Young (who had a composition premiere here a couple years ago), but MacLise passed away some 30 years before the festival even began.  

But in an imaginary, alternative time line, one wonders if MacLise would have been tempted to add four days of Big Ears to his Universal Solar Calendar (i.e., Day of Big Ears, Second Day of Big Ears, etc.). I've been tempted to add it to my New Revised USC, but the dates aren't the same every year (it's generally the last full weekend in March), and the whole purpose of the New Revision is for annual repeatability and regularity. Can't have a name day that's the 25th of Spring one year and the 23rd another year.     

All of which is probably the most awkward and nerdiest way possible to say the Big Ears music festival starts tomorrow, and I'll be going. There's no single bucket-list, must-see performer appearing this year. However, I'm looking forward to hearing some of John Zorn's sets in his third residency here in the past four years, including the first reunion of his original Masada quartet (1994-97), as well as guitarists Fred Frith, Jeff Parker, Nels Cline, Marc Ribot, and Mary Halvorson, all of whom I've seen at least once or more before at previous Big Ears since 2018. Vibraphonist Patricia Brennan will be presenting her outstanding septet and drummer Ches Smith will be performing with his new Clone Row band. Even drummer Dave Lombardo of the band Slayer will be there for a set with Zorn and keyboardist John Medeski. A first (for me, as well as many others, I suspect) will be the legendary but elusive downtown musician and artist Charlemagne Palestine, a contemporary of La Mont Young who probably knew MacLise. 

Pat Metheny is making his Big Ears debut this year and I haven't seen him since 1987, but I'll miss his 2½-hour set tomorrow night due to conflicts with other performances at or about the same time. Ditto Laurie Anderson, who I saw at Big Ears 2024 and who returns this year for several performances, including a duet with Zorn. But again, conflicts and schedule issues. 

The ghost of Lou Reed hangs over this year's festival. Not only is his widow, Laurie Anderson, performing, as is his pre-Velvets contemporary Charlemagne Palestine, but there will be an installation piece on Sunday at an old Greyhound station of Reed's guitars leaning against amplifiers to create a continuous feedback drone, accompanied by various, as-yet unannounced musicians selected by Anderson. 

The festival is like an ocean - so big you can't even drink half of it in. At any given moment, there may be as more than a dozen performances on separate stages, and one can only be at one place at a time. That can get frustrating, especially if you have FOMO, and the Zen approach is to just enjoy the set you're experiencing at any given moment and not think about all that you're missing. 

The way I look at it is Big Ears in a major event, an international gathering of an astonishing number of world-class musicians, all performing, collaborating, and improvising together in the unlikely location of Knoxville, Tennessee, a mere four-hour drive away. The event is not about me, or any other single listener, but we get to be some small part of the titanic happening. 

And for that we should be grateful.