Big Ears
2026 FESTIVAL LINEUP
JOHN ZORN (12 PERFORMANCES OVER 2 DAYS)
CURATED BY JOSH JOHNSON
Latest News from Big Ears
Big Ears: Conversations About Music
Big Ears: Conversations About Music is a podcast exploring the creative process, collaboration, and the transformative power of music. Featuring one-on-one conversations, roundtables, and discussions, it brings together cutting-edge musicians, journalists, and community voices for an intimate look at the ideas and connections behind today’s most adventurous music.
Knoxville Broadcast
This fall, Big Ears presents Knoxville Broadcast, a massive, site-specific “spatial symphony” composed by Lisa Bielawa. Taking place October 17 & 18 at World’s Fair Park, this outdoor concert will feature hundreds of Knoxville-area musicians and ensembles performing throughout the outdoor space. This free and open-to-the-public event is a celebration of Knoxville’s musical spirit. Find out how you can participate and support this one-of-a-kind event.
Highlights from Big Ears 2025
About Big ears
Big Ears collaborates with artists, audiences, and communities to create joyful, meaningful, and transcendent cultural experiences that defy boundaries, fuel curiosity, ignite the spirit, and nourish the soul.
About UsWHAT THEY’RE SAYING
Our PressBig Ears showcases the wondrously broad creativity currently at play in global-American-international music that’s not designed to be commercial, but which is nevertheless quietly infiltrating popular culture.
Unlike most big-deal music festivals, where you can map out your concert schedule with high confidence that you’ll savor every second, the sprawl of Big Ears’ lineup invites you to stop pre-Googling bands and just surrender.
Big Ears is not just a music festival. It is a beautiful roadside stop on a spiritual journey.
Big Ears touches the sublime.
If you love adventurous music, if you love finding new music you have never heard before and being completely blown away by it, if you can get to Knoxville for the Big Ears Festival, do it.
Big Ears…could well be the most exciting, exhaustive jazz festival that doesn’t call itself that.
America’s and perhaps the world’s most diverse, eclectic, and explorative festival comprising music, poetry, literature, film, and art.
Contained within a walkable radius of historic downtown Knoxville…[Big Ears] creates its own atmospheric climate, along with a center of gravity.
Instead of sales metrics or star power, Big Ears contemplates the perceptual properties of music …
At the silo-destroying Big Ears Festival, music liberated from the confines of category and overt commercialism.
The Big Ears Festival, which unfolds each spring in Knoxville, Tennessee, might be the most open-minded music gathering in the country.
There’s no other festival quite like Big Ears.
One of the most quietly earth-shattering, subtly luminous festivals the world over.
It’s no exaggeration to describe the Big Ears Festival as one of the most unique and eclectic musical gatherings one may ever be fortunate enough to encounter.
