Downtown, in the musical sense, seems to be expanding southward. Big Ears, a festival in Knoxville, Tenn., in which indie classical, pop and jazz composers and ensembles rub shoulders, has announced its 2015 roster, and it reads like a season listing for Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, compressed into a single weekend, March 27-29.
The Kronos Quartet will be the festival’s artists-in-residence, and will perform several programs, including “Landfall,” its collaboration with Laurie Anderson. Two rock guitarists-turned-classical composers, Nels Cline of Wilco and Bryce Dessner of the National, will also join forces with Kronos, as will the Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq.
The schedule also includes the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra, which will perform Max Richter’s “Vivaldi: The Four Seasons Recomposed,” a contemporary expansion of the popular set of Baroque concertos. The Minimalist pioneer Terry Riley will also perform; as will the genre-straddling composers Harold Budd, Ben Frost and Amen Dunes; the jazz guitarist Bill Frisell; the Dutch lutenist and composer Jozef van Wissem; and the folksingers Sam Amidon and Rhiannon Giddens. The ensembles on the roster include the Bad Plus, SQÜRL (in which the film director Jim Jarmusch plays guitar), Swans and Tune-Yards.
The full roster is available at the festival’s website, BigEarsFestival.com.