KNOXVILLE, TN – As the New Year unfolds, Big Ears 2026 continues to reveal itself, one surprise at a time, with more to come in the weeks ahead.
For the festival weekend only, Big Ears will reopen Knoxville’s iconic Magnolia Greyhound Bus Terminal, a storied architectural landmark that served the city for more than 60 years. Opened in 1959 and celebrated for its Streamline Moderne, mid-century design, the terminal closed in 2022 and was saved from demolition for future redevelopment.
In collaboration with Dewhirst Properties and the City of Knoxville, Big Ears will bring this remarkable space back to life as a new festival venue, hosting a series of distinctive—and at times fully immersive—programs that add a powerful new dimension to the 2026 festival. Located just two blocks from the Mill & Mine, The Point, and Knoxville’s Old City, The Greyhound is poised to become one of Big Ears’ most unforgettable settings.
SML will be gracing the Greyhound stage on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings.
In only four years, SML has emerged as one of the great American jazz-ish acts, an ensemble accidentally borne out of a fertile Los Angeles scene that seems to know nothing of stylistic limitations. Guitarist Greg Uhlmann booked two nights at the late, great Highland Park space ETA, inviting four other instrumentalists who had never shared a stage all at once. There was Anna Butterss, the versatile Australian bassist who had played with Jeff Parker and Jason Isbell. There was Jeremiah Chiu, the inquisitive synthesizer player who seemed to sense everything as input for his machines. There was Josh Johnson, a saxophone session ace who had learned to use loops and effects on his horn like a series of magic tricks. And there was Booker Stardrum, a drummer who, like Butterss, seemed capable of shapeshifting in so many different contexts. Those shows were recorded. The chemistry was apparent, and SML was born.
On its lauded 2024 debut, Small Medium Large, the quintet took those tapes into a series of home studios and blurred the boundaries between live takes and studio manipulation, between machines and humans. With impossibly tricky rhythms, where players move against and with each other in dazzling patterns, the record raised questions about where jazz ends and electronica begins, about how Miles Davis and Conny Plank share space in ideas of modern creation. They do this live, too, with Chiu processing signals in real time and the band pushing against the idea of the shared rhythmic “one” like a curse. “We talked a little bit about the music one night, and it just ended up getting in our way,” Butterss once told Hearing Things. “I was thinking about what we talked about versus being in the moment, which is the space I really want to be in.” At Big Ears, where SML will be in residency, this great quintet will have many chances to find such spaces.
Additional concerts, plus conversations, live podcasts, films, and art exhibitions will all be revealed in the coming weeks.
Tickets and the schedule are available at bigearsfestival.org
