Pass Alert! / 100 of Our Favorite Things (Part 7)
Big Ears 2025 Festival Pass Alert!
While regularly priced 4-day Weekend and Single-Day passes are still available, some of the most popular Big Ears festival pass options – in particular, VIP and Premier passes as well as special early bird pricing options – are either sold out or in very short supply.
Thanks to everyone for your tremendous support.
We have an amazing weekend planned for March 27 – 30!
100 of Our Favorite Things Coming to Big Ears 2025 (Part 7)
Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee, released one of the great recordings of 2024, Tigers Blood, a few months back. Waxahatchee will make her long-awaited Big Ears debut in March on the heels of her first-ever Grammy nomination.
Saxophonist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and Grammy Award-winning producer Josh Johnson seems to be vying for MVP status at Big Ears 2025, performing with Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet, with the supergroup in-the-making SML, as well as delivering a one-of-a-kind solo performance.
In January 2022, drummer Mike Reed gathered together The Separatist Party, some of the most creative figures in Chicagoʼs experimental and improvised music community, putting sound to their experiences of forced seclusion, with cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, poet and spoken word artist Marvin Tate, and members of Bitchin Bajas (Rob Frye, Cooper Crain, and Dan Quinlivan).
No stranger to Big Ears, the enchanting Arooj Aftab’s 2025 return appearance will feature the haunting and evocative songs on her latest recording, Night Reign, which appeared on virtually every “Best of 2024” list around.
William Basinski’s mesmerizing live performances build upon the haunting, evocative, deeply humanist ethos of his pivotal explorations in The Disintegration Loops, which have made him one of the most influential creators of ambient sound.
One of the most exciting new artists in jazz today, saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Immanuel Wilkins brings an expanded ensemble and a new project to Big Ears. Written amidst the throes of the pandemic, Blues Blood is a remarkable work, wading through deep cultural and emotional territory.
After his mind-bending curation last year at Big Ears, King Britt returns with another edition of Blacktronika spanning the Big Ears weekend. Experience the genre-bending brilliance of artists including Asha Puthli, Antipop Consortium, and Free Form Funky Freqs, plus a special collaboration with Tyshawn Sorey, Britt, Melz, and Meshell Ndegeocello.
Cassandra Jenkins released one of the most intimate, emotionally resonant, and totally addictive recordings of the pandemic in An Overview of Phenomenal Nature. Her follow up release, My Light, My Destroyer, having topped numerous “Best of 2024” lists, shows that this gifted singer-songwriter is continuing to evolve.
Two of the most creative and exciting artists to have emerged during the heyday of the Downtown New York City scene, Ikue Mori and Zeena Parkins create music of exotic beauty and beguiling mystery with their ongoing collaboration, Phantom Orchard.
The “comprehensively astounding” 21st century masterpiece Ipsa Dixit, by Kate Soper, a high-energy, philosophical treatise turned operatic tour-de-force, will get its full theatrical presentation on opening night of Big Ears, Thursday, March 27.
Coming up at the turn of the century, when underground rap was all about dusty loops and intricate battle rhymes, M. Sayyid, Hprizm, and Beans mixed an experimental, electronically charged sound palette with lyricism sharpened on the NY poetry scene. A quarter of a century later finds Antipop Consortium still on the edge and as vital as ever.
The brilliant and acclaimed singer Fay Victor brings her loving celebration and reimagining of jazz composer Herbie Nichols’ rich legacy, with voice and lyrics and her innovative arrangements brought to vibrant life by Herbie Nichols SUNG, a dedicated and profoundly gifted quintet of veteran jazz performers.
