Everything Done Right at Big Ears

Seeking musical sustenance, and finding it, in Knoxville.

Immanuel Wilkins’ Blues Blood at the Bijou Theater, March 28, 2025. (The Gig)

Don’t come hungry to Blues Blood.

This is just common sense, for anyone who has ever experienced the interdisciplinary splendor of alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins’ performance piece firsthand. My own initial exposure to the work transpired almost a year and a half ago in New York, so I knew to expect some savory aromatics from Wilkins and his cohort at the Bijou Theater late last month, during their portion of the 2025 Big Ears Festival.

Those enticing scents emanated from center stage, where chef Pierre Serrao, one-third of the Bronx collective Ghetto Gastro¹, set about preparing an unannounced Afro-Caribbean stew. From my third-row seat, I could see and hear him chopping onions and Scotch bonnet peppers. I was enveloped by the bittersweet, nutty waft of caramelized cane sugar. I could clock the sizzle of spice-marinated chicken as it hit shimmering oil in a cast-iron enamel pot. By the time Serrao poured in a generous glug of coconut milk, the sensory overload was exacting real physical discomfort.² Because, friend, I’d come hungry to Blues Blood, like some kind of rube. The pangs made themselves at home, became an integral, unavoidable part of the show.

The concert began at noon. I’d rushed through a nominal breakfast before a 10 a.m. interview, one of a smattering of public talks I presented at this edition of Big Ears. There was no time to squeeze in a bite before the concert, and I didn’t give it a second thought. To be honest, I’d underestimated how tantalizing it would be to sit captive for an hour while layers of deep flavor simmered on a nearby stove. Since my first encounter with Blues Blood, I’d spent a lot of time with its recorded version, which perched high on many lists last year, including mine. But there’s no olfactory aspect to that Blue Note album, which captivates through strictly auditory means.

At the Bijou as on the album, Wilkins marshaled an elastic yet earthy rhythm section, and three vocalists of transfixing power. June McDoom was the most delicate and interior, singing in a quavery head voice. Yaw Agyeman was a rabble-rouser, notably on a piece titled “EVERYTHING,” which invites the listener to conflate an arboreal root system with an ancestral bloodline. At one point, the song’s kinetic churn slowed to a resting pulse, making space for Ganavya to project a supplicatory beam to the heavens. This was a breathtaking interlude, suffused with yearning and surrender; I later heard from a few different friends that it brought them to tears. The culmination was a deliberative refrain over tolling chords: “everything, when done right, is prayer.”

I’m focusing on this moment as emblematic of my 2025 Big Ears experience — for the collision of earnest spiritual enlightenment and stubborn physical need, those nagging tensions between ardor and appetite. Like everyone else converging on a square mile of downtown Knoxville for a musically dense four-day weekend, I struggled with how much there was to take in, and how much I had to miss.

But only a fool resists satisfaction in the face of saturation. I experienced nearly 30 glorious concerts, including a few, like Blues Blood, that left me changed in some way. Here below is my best attempt to make sense of it all.