Inside the Ear Canal of Big Ears 2016 with 7 Performer Interviews.
The 2016 Big Ears Festival takes place March 31-April 3 in Knoxville, TN, presenting their latest iteration of cutting-edge music. We’ve interviewed several of the participating artists over the years. Here are some aids to prep you for Big Ears 2016: performers Laurie Anderson, John Luther Adams, Philip Glass, Lou Reed, Ólafur Arnalds & Kiasmos, Sun Ra Arkestra, and Maya Beiser.
LAURIE ANDERSON is a genre unto herself, an electronic Diva, an observer of the age, and one of the most perceptive and inventive musicians of our era. She’ll be omnipresent at Big Ears performing, curating Lou Reed’s “Drones” and screening her film, Heart of a Dog. We talked to her about that last year.
Lou Reed: And speaking of Lou Reed’s Drones, we talked to him several years ago about his ambient drone album, Hudson River Wind Meditations which I suspect won’t be that dissimilar from “Drones”
John Luther Adams is the Composer-In-Residence for the festival. We’ll have a new interview soon, but we talked to him about his environmentally inspired music a while back.
Philip Glass will be performing with Laurie Anderson, We’ll go back to our retrospective of his music from his 75th Birthday.
Maya Beiser will be performing the music of Steve Reich, Lou Reed and Led Zeppelin on cello. We interviewed her about her album of rock covers called Uncovered.
Ólafur Arnalds has been a frequent guest on Echoes. We talked to him a little while back about his score to the series, Broadchurch and his electronic duo with Janus Rasmussen as Kiasmos who will perform at Big Ears.
Sun Ra Arkestra: We’ve never interview Sun Ra or the Arkestra on Echoes, but we have celebrated his music. Here’s Ten Sun Ra Albums to Blow Your Mind and a review of the Marshall Allen led Sun Ra Arkestra live from this past Halloween.
Big Ears Festival 2016: Finally we have our interview with Big Ears founder, Ashley Capps, previewing this years festival along with John Luther Adams and Laurie Anderson.
~John Diliberto
3/29/2016