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 Laraaji: Laughter Meditation Playshops & Day of Radiance

Laraaji — celestial musician, laugh activist, and singular spiritual force — brings something to Big Ears that goes beyond performance. His Laughter Meditation Play Shops are communal, participatory events that use laughter, play, and sound as pathways to presence and openness. Don’t miss his Day of Radiance concert Saturday at First Presbyterian, a full immersion in the shimmering, drone-rich soundworld that has made him one of the most beloved figures in contemporary music.

More Conversations & Panels

This year's Conversations program is the most expansive in the festival's history — bringing together musicians, critics, historians, and cultural figures across four days and multiple venues.

Essential Tremors: Roscoe Mitchell
Fri 1:00p / PostModern Sound Exchange

The Essential Tremors team have announced a very special fifth installment of their live podcast presentations, with the one and only Roscoe Mitchell — founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, pioneering force in free jazz and avant-garde composition, and truly one of the legendary iconoclastic artists of our time. We can't wait to hear him play and discuss three of the pieces of music that shaped his extraordinary musical evolution.

Festival Culture:

Music in America Post-1965
with Joe Boyd, Robert Gordon

& Ashley Capps

Thu 2:30p / PostModern Sound Exchange

Producer and author Joe Boyd, filmmaker and writer Robert Gordon, and Big Ears founder Ashley Capps gather to reflect on the forces that have shaped music and festival life across six decades — from the charged atmosphere of the 1960s to the fractured and fertile present.

Éthiopiques:
The Last Music to Reach Our Shores

with Joe Boyd, Francis Falceto

& Rush Gershon
Sun 10:00a / The Blackbox

Three figures whose lives have been shaped by Ethiopia's extraordinary musical legacy gather for a conversation about how that music was made, nearly lost, and ultimately found its way to the world. Falceto, the French producer and scholar who spent four decades excavating the country's Golden Age for the landmark Éthiopiques series, is joined by Gershon, whose Either/Orchestra has carried that music into the present, and Boyd, whose lifetime of work at the intersection of global music and Western culture makes him an ideal interlocutor.

Tell Me Your Story, I’ll Tell You Mine

with Kweku Sumbry, Fay Victor, Kaoru Watanabe & Larry Blumenfeld
Fri 11:00a / Blue Note Lounge

With both disarming tenderness and impressive force, on drums and flutes, Kaoru Watanabe forges singular blends of Eastern and Western musical influences. His Bloodlines Interwoven project unfolds at this year’s festival through multiple performances, gathering world-class musicians to explore family histories and personal narratives through collaborative creation. Culture reporter and music critic Larry Blumenfeld explores this process with Watanabe, drummer Kweku Sumbry, and vocalist Fay Victor.

Scoring the Story

with Pat Irwin, Lucrecia Dalt, Mary Lattimore, Julianna Barwick,

Chuck Johnson & Stephen Brower
Fri 11:30a / PostModern Sound Exchange

A conversation with composers and songwriters who have created music for film and television, reflecting on collaboration, authorship, and what it means to shape sound in service of a larger story.

Download the App / Secret Shows

This year, in addition to the events already announced, Big Ears will once again host an array of surprise, pop-up, “secret shows” - at least a dozen or so at last count. How can you find out about these? How do you get in the info loop? It’s simple. Download the app. It's your all-in-one festival guide — browse the full lineup and schedule, build your personal schedule with favorites, navigate the grounds with an interactive map, and get real-time push notifications about set times, lineup changes, surprise pop-ups and secret shows, and important updates.