Chávez / Ismaily / Saunier

Maria Chávez, Greg Saunier, and Shahzad Ismaily are all familiar faces at Big Ears. Born in Peru and based in New York, Chávez is not only an innovative turntablist who uses double-needled cartridges, broken records, and four interlinked turntables but also an improvising composer, building teeming pieces of musique concrète in real time. She was here in 2025 with Victoria Shen and Mariam Rezaei. Greg Saunier plays drums in Deerhoof, the ever-daring indie rock band he founded a quarter-century ago. He is a truly explosive drummer whose range has become clear on works with the likes of Anthony Braxton and Mary Halvorson. Deerhoof visited Big Ears in 2017 and returns in 2026. And when has Shahzad Ismaily not been at Big Ears? The talented producer and consummate multi-instrumentalist has been a fixture on Knoxville stages every spring for a decade.

But you’ve never encountered them quite like this, as an improvising trio. The Wire praised their Brooklyn debut in May 2025 as “a reminder of […] the sheer joy of seeing what surprises we can find in sound,” and they have scheduled a subsequent East Coast run in January 2026. With Saunier’s drums, Ismaily’s rotation of bass and keys, and Chávez’s mesmerizing turntable odysseys, the trio makes one of its first appearances beyond New York, Philadelphia, and Washington in Knoxville.