Big Ears 2026: Ideas, Panels, and Deep Listening

A guide to the conversations shaping this year’s festival, from John Zorn’s far-reaching influence to the future of music writing, independent labels, and the ways listening itself gets sharpened in the room.

Big Ears, which begins on Thursday in Knoxville, Tenn., has always treated listening as something you practice, not something that just happens, and in 2026 that idea runs through everything, from the daytime conversations to the performances themselves. Before the schedule splinters, you can sit in rooms unpacking Zorn’s long wake, the state of music writing, or what sustains independent labels, then step back out into a lineup where those ideas take shape in real time: SML settling into a residency, Wild Up reframing Arthur Russell’s dance music, John Zorn seemingly everywhere at once, Lucrecia Dalt moving between forms, Shane Parish pulling Autechre into a new physical language.

For those coming through the In Sheep’s Clothing lens, these conversations don’t feel like side programming. They recalibrate how you hear the rest, slowing things down and sharpening attention before the music floods in. Improvisation, authorship, lineage, taste, all of it gets worked through in daylight, so that by the time you’re moving between venues, the connections are already there.

This year, In Sheep’s Clothing is headed to Big Ears, bringing that same listening-first approach into a weekend built for it. If you’re part of the ISC community and making the trip to Knoxville, it’d be great to connect, whether between sets, in a quiet room, or somewhere in the drift between venues. Reach out to Randall Roberts on Instagram @liledit.

What follows is a guide to a few of those conversations, places where the festival pauses just long enough to think about what it’s doing.

Friday

He Made the World Bigger: The Legacy of John Zorn
Fri, Mar 27, 2026 – 9:30 AM, Knoxville Museum of Art
With John Medeski, Dave Lombardo, Barbara Hannigan, Jorge Roeder, Hank Shteamer
John Zorn’s influence lands less as repertoire than as a way of working, a constant push toward risk, hybridity, and deep attention. Jazz writer Hank Shteamer gathers collaborators from across that orbit to talk about what it means to operate inside his world, where boundaries collapse and listening becomes the engine for everything that follows.

Essential Tremors: Shahzad Ismaily
Fri, Mar 27, 2026 – 10:00 AM, Regas Square
Hosted by guitarist Fred Frith; presented by the Essential Tremors Podcast with Lee Gardner and Matthew Byars
Ismaily has built a career on responsiveness, the ability to enter a musical situation and subtly reshape it from within. This conversation traces the records, relationships, and instincts that formed that approach, offering a glimpse into how a truly collaborative musician listens.

Beyond the Dead: Jam & Experimental Traditions
Fri, Mar 27, 2026 – 11:00 AM, Blue Note Lounge
With Don Was, Alex Bleeker, Jon Samuels, Nick Sanborn, Grayson Haver Currin
Improvisation is the common ground here, not as spectacle but as process. Starting with the Dead and moving outward, the panel maps a shared language between jam culture and experimental music, where repetition, drift, and risk open things up rather than close them down.

Scoring the Story
Fri, Mar 27, 2026 – 11:30 AM, PostModern Sound Exchange
With Pat Irwin, Lucrecia Dalt, Mary Lattimore, Julianna Barwick, Chuck Johnson; hosted by Stephen Brower
Writing for film means letting go of control in order to serve something larger. These composers talk through that tension, and how careful listening guides decisions that shape mood and narrative without ever stepping fully into the spotlight.

Saturday

Music Writing for the Digital Age
Sat, Mar 28, 2026 – 9:30 AM, PostModern Sound Exchange
With John Schaefer, Nate Chinen, Grayson Haver Currin, Ann Powers
Criticism now exists inside a constant churn, where attention is fragmented and context is easy to lose. This conversation with stellar music writers looks at what still holds, and how writing can slow things down, sharpen listening, and keep music connected to a broader cultural conversation.

100 Miles and Counting: The Legacy and Impact of Miles Davis
Sat, Mar 28, 2026 – 9:30 AM, Blue Note Lounge
With Vince Wilburn Jr., Marquis Hill, Nate Smith, Steven Bernstein, Ashley Kahn
Miles Davis treated change as a principle, not a phase. This panel follows that restlessness across decades, tracing how his approach to collaboration and reinvention continues to shape how musicians think, lead, and listen.

Essential Tremors: Joe Westerlund
Sat, Mar 28, 2026 – 10:00 AM, Regas Square
Hosted by Lee Gardner and Matthew Byars
Westerlund’s playing hinges on feel, space, and the subtle push and pull of rhythm inside a group. Here, he reflects on the records and influences that shaped that sensibility, and how listening informs the physical act of playing.

Fight With Music: A Conversation with Marc Ribot & Grayson Haver Currin
Sat, Mar 28, 2026 – 11:00 AM, PostModern Sound Exchange
With Marc Ribot, Grayson Haver Currin
Ribot has long blurred the line between music and politics, treating both as sites of struggle and expression. This conversation draws those threads together, connecting his guitar work to his advocacy for artists navigating an increasingly extractive digital landscape.

Emancipation Proclamations
Sat, Mar 28, 2026 – 11:00 AM, Blue Note Lounge
With Larry Blumenfeld in conversation with Melvin Gibbs, J.T. Lewis, Georgia Anne Muldrow, Brandon Ross
Black music here is framed as a living, evolving force rather than a fixed tradition. Centered on Harriet Tubman and Electrical Fields of Love, the discussion moves through collaboration, history, and the ongoing work of carrying that lineage forward.

Sunday

Essential Tremors: Tom Skinner
Sun, Mar 29, 2026 – 10:00 AM, Regas Square
Hosted by Lee Gardner and Matthew Byars
Skinner’s work balances structure and openness, groove and abstraction, with an ear toward space as much as sound. This conversation traces the listening behind that balance, and how those instincts translate across different musical settings.

Sustaining Independent Labels
Sun, Mar 29, 2026 – 10:30 AM, PostModern Sound Exchange
With Liz Pelly (moderator), Scottie McNiece, Jake Saunders, Adam Downey, Yulun Wang, Amelia Meath
Independent music is often framed in terms of collapse, but it continues to find ways forward. This panel focuses on what actually works, from practical economics to the quieter networks of trust, taste, and community that keep things moving.

Home and Away
Sun, Mar 29, 2026 – 11:30 AM, Blue Note Lounge
With Muireann Bradley, Miriam Elhajli, Anna Tivel, Shirlette Ammons, Yasmin Williams, Ann Powers
Tradition can anchor or unsettle, depending on how it’s approached. These artists explore what it means to work within inherited forms, and how distance, identity, and intention shape the way those forms evolve.

What Is Deep Taste?
Sun, Mar 29, 2026 – 12:00 PM, PostModern Sound Exchange
With William Tyler, Lucrecia Dalt, Grayson Haver Currin, Jeremy D. Larson
Taste is often treated as instinct, but this conversation slows it down, reframing it as something learned and embodied. Set against the flattening pull of algorithms, it asks how listening can become a deeper, more connective act.