With minds mostly boggled and ears now feeling oversized, 2019 Big Ears Festival attendees have drifted back to their corners of the world, left to replay in their minds their adrenaline-fueled, four-day romance with music and performance. Like with any passionate whirlwind affair, there are Big Ears regrets and guilt to go along with the elation and joys of discovery. In this case, however, regrets come from having missed a certain performer’s performance and guilt from having to choose between two not-to-be-missed options. But, if we are the choices we make, I can say with certainty that no two people will ever have exactly the same Big Ears experience—or be surprised in exactly the same way.
One of those not-to-be-missed performances came near the end of Festival—the anxiously awaited Arvo Pärt Passio performed by the St. John’s Cathedral Choir in the Big Ears venue that is their home. Passio was part of the festival’s ECM focus, with the label managing the first—and definitive—recording of the work with the Hilliard Ensemble in 1988. That connection aside, Passio and Big Ears was a perfect pairing, given that the work is rarely performed and performances that are mounted require the kind of dedicated support and a receptive audience that a festival like Big Ears can provide.
In a festival where minimalism takes a myriad of delicious forms, Pärt’s take on the Passion According to St. John, in Latin text, stands alone in the beauty of its specific structure. In stark contrast to the versions of the Passion by J.S. Bach and others, Pärt’s Passio mysteries come not from melody, emotion, and dramatic narrative, but rather recalls medieval plainchant in a completely contemporary, if mathematical, light. Clearly, the work speaks both on a religious level and on a purely sublime sonic level, making its programming a captivating risk. In a festival of eclecticism where “try it and see if you like it, feel free to leave if you don’t” is an operative guideline, it was a statement of this performance’s power and attraction that most of the audience remained entranced for the full 70 minutes.
The score for Passio reflects the work’s arrangement: bass and tenor soloists—Jesus (Daniel Johnson-Webb) and Pilate (William Brimer) respectively—an SATB quartet (Gail Broxson, soprano; Tracy Doty Ward, alto; Cary Smith, tenor; Perry Ward, bass) that serves as the “evangelist”, the choir under music director and conductor Jason Overall, and a string and wind ensemble (Sean Claire, violin; Claire Chenette, oboe; D. Scot Williams, cello; Aaron Apaza, bassoon) plus organ (Eunjin Choi).
Speaking of music labels, Deutsche Grammophon, known for its catalog of major orchestras, conductors, and artists, has managed to play on both sides of the street with its ReComposed Series in which well-known classical pieces are re-imagined in ways that generally respect the original, yet expand the work with contemporary textures. For a Big Ears 2015 appearance, German composer Max Richter offered his re-imagined Vivaldi’s Four Seasons that featured the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and members of ACME. Following his DG release last fall of Recomposed by Peter Gregson: Bach – The Cello Suites, the Scottish cellist appeared at the Tennessee Theatre, this time with five local cellists as his ensemble—Andy Bryenton, Theodore Kartal, Stacy M. Nickell, D. Scot Williams, and Cecilia Wright. As one might imagine, Gregson’s work really creates something entirely new, expanding the textural depth of the originals and building in a new environmental background with the help of synthesizer effects. Strangely, not enough of a time slot was allotted to Gregson and his ensemble—he didn’t get through the Suite No. 6 in D Major before the plug was pulled.
I might have been disappointed had the next slot not been Bryce Dessner’s Triptych (“Eyes of One on Another”) with Roomful of Teeth and additional instrumentalists, some of them local players. Dessner’s score and photographic projections of Robert Mapplethorpe’s work was entrancing in this major production.
More local connections came with Nief-Norf, the Knoxville-based contemporary music organization, performing with Harold Budd at Church Street United Methodist. At the Bijou, the KSO strings joined Richard Thompson for his song cycle “Killed in Action.”
As expected, and practically demanded, a plethora of artistic contrasts were there for the picking. I loved the addictive The Comet is Coming, a trio of saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, synth keyboardist Dan Leavers, and drummer Max Hallett. At the opposite end of the ensemble spectrum was the surprisingly virtuosic “new-grass” ensemble Hawktail, a quartet of fiddler Brittany Haas, bassist Paul Kowert, guitarist Jordan Tice, and mandolinist Dominick Leslie.
In any other non-festival context, such contrasts might be jarring or cancel each other out. Somehow, though, the artistic blanket that is Big Ears wraps up the participant, subjecting those that submit to the notion that anything—and everything—seems possible. The biggest Big Ears surprise would be if there were no surprises at all. And, that just isn’t gonna happen.
