The Big Ears Festival returns—for the first time since 2019—to venues throughout downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, March 24–27, 2022, and its line-up has now been announced. Featured among the performers are several artists familiar to readers of the Nonesuch Journal: Caroline Shaw, Sō Percussion, Kronos Quartet, Jeff Parker, and Tristan Perich.

Caroline Shaw has a pair of performances at Big Ears: first, a presentation of Let The Soil Play Its Simple Part, her collaboration with Sō Percussion, the first recording of which was released earlier this year on Nonesuch Records, and a solo concert featuring Shaw’s voice and violin. "Shaw centers herself in a project that captures her earthy inspirations while flexing her capacity for sparkling compositions," says Pitchfork of the new album. "Her voice as a singer and composer shines in these songs ... Shaw's work highlights the divine in the ordinary." Sō plays its own concert as well. Also at Big Ears will be Attacca Quartet, which won a Grammy Award for its performance of Caroline Shaw's Orange, released on New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records in 2019.

Kronos Quartet also plays two programs at Big Ears: A Thousand Thoughts, the group's live documentary with filmmaker Sam Green, and Cadenza on the Night Plain, a program built around composer Terry Riley’s seminal early-80s composition. The piece can be heard in the 2015 box set of Kronos collaborations with Riley, One Earth, One People, One Love: Kronos Plays Terry Riley. Their latest release together, Sun Rings, won a 2019 Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical.

Jeff Parker performs at Big Ears with his band the New Breed. The composer/multi-instrumentalist's latest album, Suite for Max Brown, was released on International Anthem and Nonesuch Records last year. The album, named for and dedicated to his mother, features nine original songs plus "Gnarciss," an interpretation of Joe Henderson's "Black Narcissus," and John Coltrane's "After the Rain." Parker plays the majority of the instruments on the album. "The veteran guitarist has created an effortlessly detailed album, full of tradition and experimentation that spans generations," says Pitchfork. "It lives at the vanguard of new jazz music."

Tristan Perich will unveil a new piece for organ, performed by James McVinnie, one-bit electronics, and 100 loudspeakers, at Big Ears. The composer's Drift Multiply was released on New Amsterdam and Nonesuch Records last year. That piece, for 50 violins and 50-channel 1-bit electronics, is scored as one hundred individual lines of music, blending violins and speakers into a cascading tapestry of tone, harmony, and noise.

For more information on these and all the announced programming at Big Ears, including events with Bill Frisell and John Zorn, visit bigearsfestival.org. Weekend festival passes will be available there from this Thursday, September 16, at noon ET.