Each year at the end of March, sleepy Knoxville, Tennessee is taken over by hundreds of musicians from every corner of the world, for the Big Ears Festival. It's widely considered the most diverse music festival in the country, and most likely the world. This live broadcast from Overlook Mountain will recap a tiny fraction of the music host Rob Saffer experienced when he attended the 10th Big Ears Festival: showcasing the festival’s breadth by spanning genres from contemporary classical and desert blues to avant garde jazz and Americana. Turning 70 later this year, John Zorn was the featured composer and put together over 20 different sets of music, playing in and conducting several of them. There were more women, guitars and jazz bands than in past Big Ears festivals. One of the hallmarks of the festival is the one-off collaborations among musicians as well as a democratized leveling where audience and musicians mix together to check out performances.

Playlist:
Open the Gates - Irreversible Entanglements
Sick Fire - The Bad Plus
Round Robin - Tarbaby
Tabasco - William Parker Mayan Space Station
Shape Shifter - Rob Mazurek Exploding Star Orchestra
Ramblin - Charles Lloyd & the Marvels
Throw Down Your Heart - Bela Fleck / Bassekou Kouyate
Jamana Be Diya - Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba
Alhaire - Etran De L’Air
Postizo - Mark Ribot & Los Cubanos Postizos
A Different View - Bill Orcutt
Before I Knew The Truth - Liturgy
Christos - Tarta Relena
Rumiel - John Zorn / Mycale A Capella
Re cha - John Zorn / Gnostic Trio
Hath Arob - John Zorn New Masada Quartet
Bagatelle 57 - John Zorn / Mary Halvorson Quartet
Side Effect - Mary Halvorson Amaryllis
To Remain To Return - Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, Shahzad Ismaily
Becoming Air (excerpt) - Annea Lockwood / Nate Wooley
Divisio Spiralis X (excerpt) - Catherine Lamb / Jack Quartet

After the local news at noon, “Overlooked” is a show focusing on overlooked and under-heard jazz, improvisational, and other fringe music, from early roots to contemporary experiments, a mix of familiar to rare, classic to weird. Live from the shadow of Overlook Mountain in Ulster County.

Host Rob Saffer is the former Executive Director and Producer of the Creative Music Foundation. While living in Brooklyn for 25 years, he served on advisory boards for Celebrate Brooklyn and Symphony Space. He also curated the Brooklyn Museum’s summer jazz series and helped found The Mingus Big Band.

Overlooked Playlist Archive