Big Ears Festival: Free Events

Big Ears Festival continues to bring the world to Knoxville. This week, the Big Ears Festival returns for its 10th Anniversary – with people coming from 48 states and 21 countries (including Australia, Japan, Israel, Chile, and Serbia) – to attend the four-day music, art, and dance extravaganza. It opens Thursday evening and continues through Sunday, with nearly 150 jazz, rock, classical, bluegrass and folk concerts in venues ranging from the Tennessee and Bijou Theaters to St. John’s Cathedral and Church Street United Methodist Church, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Standard, the Mill & Mine, the Square Room, Boyd’s Jig and Reel, and the Pilot Light. If you don’t have a day ticket or weekend pass, you can still enjoy these free offerings! See https://bigearsfestival.org/about/experiences/ for more information.

• For the sixth consecutive year, we are honored and excited to announce four completely FREE days of music at The Pilot Light, downtown Knoxville’s local and experimental music hub since 2000. These concerts—all booked by The Pilot Light’s Boardman—put our ideals about programming cutting-edge sound at play within the context of a thriving small club that happens to be, like the festival itself, a nonprofit enterprise. Mixing regional talent with several vital players from the United States’ musical frontiers, this year’s The Pilot Light programming is a compelling component. https://bigearsfestival.org/pilot-light/
• WDVX Blue Plate Special: Big Ears comes to the Blue Plate!, Visitor Center – FREE – Thu Mar 21, Noon; Fri Mar 22, noon (at Barley’s Taproom); Sat Mar 23, noon
• FREE Big Ears Festival Shows, Boyd’s Jig & Reel – Fri Mar 22, 11:00 AM – 1:00 AM; Sat Mar 23, 11:00 AM – 1:00 AM; Sun Mar 24, 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM
• (UPDATED) Big Ears for Little Ears – Saturday morning at 10 AM in Visit Knoxville’s Visit Center, featuring Leo Wadada Smith and his Trio, hosted by WDVX in collaboration with Kidstuff. https://wdvx.com/event/big-ears-little-ears/
• Ampient Brunch – Fri, Sat, Sun 10 AM – noon – A popular Big Ears tradition since our debut in 2009 returns: During Ampient Brunch, a collective of local musicians explores their shared interest in ambient music at Old City Java, one of Knoxville’s essential coffee outposts. These musicians will share some mellow sounds as you sip your caffeine. These performances are FREE and open to the public.
• Public Cinema Screenings –
• Big Ears and Knoxville microcinema masterminds Public Cinema are thrilled to announce the core of the film screenings at the 2019 festival, which will turn the University of Tennessee’s UT Downtown Gallery into a provocative movie house throughout the month of March. The works of four filmmakers with very different but equally compelling approaches to the screen get their own days in the Gallery, with their works shown as repeated loops or in enormous uninterrupted blocks. Like the music festival itself, the film component of Big Ears 2019 is honored to bring challenging, riveting, and rewarding work to Knoxville. http://www.publiccinema.org/bigears2019/ and https://bigearsfestival.org/public-cinemas-curated-screenings-at-big-ears-2019