For musicians who live somewhere between genres — folk and jazz, rock and improvisation, structure and chaos — the annual Big Ears Festival has long felt like a kind of musical promised land.
Durham percussionist Joe Westerlund knows the feeling well.
For years, he watched from afar as the Knoxville, Tennessee, gathering assembled a lineup that seemed to bend the entire idea of what a festival could be. One year it might feature avant-garde jazz titans, the next an indie rock cult hero, a classical ensemble and a folk singer all sharing the same bill.
Artists didn’t fit neatly into categories. That was the point.
“Playing Big Ears has been a huge dream of mine,” Westerlund said. “Even going to it was a huge dream for a long time. I remember seeing it from the beginning and thinking, ‘Wow — this looks incredible. A festival made for me just to go and listen.’”
Later this month, he’ll finally be part of it.
The Knoxville festival — now one of the most respected music gatherings in the country — returns with a lineup that spans generations and continents. Legendary icons like Robert Plant and David Byrne headline the 2026 event alongside visionary artists such as Laurie Anderson, John Zorn and Flying Lotus.
For Westerlund, the company alone is humbling.
“It’s wild to even be in the company of people like that,” he said. “Those artists are in my DNA the same way they are for a lot of people.”
North Carolina music fans may remember Westerlund from the acclaimed indie-folk trio Megafaun, which emerged from the Triangle’s fertile music scene during the first decade of the 2000s. But his career since has taken a more exploratory turn — moving deeper into improvisation, collaboration and experimental composition.
Big Ears, it turns out, is exactly the kind of place where that evolution makes sense.
This year, Westerlund will perform at the festival with three different projects.
Two fall under his own musical umbrella, including a solo set built around percussion, extemporization and sonic texture. The third is Setting, an ensemble rooted in collective avant-garde experimentation, taking a page respectfully from the gifts of Brian Eno as well as minimalist composers Steve Reich and John Cage. Their forthcoming self-titled album is out April 24.
“I’m playing the festival with three different projects,” he said. “Two of them are ones I consider my own — one is a solo set — and I’m also playing with Setting. It feels like a lot of boxes are getting checked.”
Westerlund’s solo performance will feature familiar collaborators: Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist, DJ and producer Nick Sanborn, a fellow Megafaun member, and Chris Rosenau of Volcano Choir and Collections of Colonies of Bees. The appearances are part of a shared tour where the musicians frequently join one another’s sets — a stamp of Big Ears’ fluid atmosphere.
For much of his early career, Westerlund was known primarily as a drummer supporting other artists. But the pandemic years opened space for a new direction.
“I’ve always been hired as a percussionist for song-based music,” he said. “But after the pandemic, another thread really emerged where I’ve put more emphasis on writing my own music and creating through improvisation.”
That creative shift now revolves around three primary outlets: his solo work, the band Setting and a duo with trumpeter Trever Hagen. He and Hagen released “Grotto” in 2024 to high acclaim, praised for its electroacoustic textures which are equal parts cadenced as they are melodic — another nod to the Mount Rushmore (Brian Eno, John Cage, John Cale, Robert Fripp) of the genre.
“Those three things are really the focal point of my music right now,” Westerlund said.
Even as those projects carry him across the country — particularly to the Midwest, where several collaborators live — Westerlund has chosen to plant deeper roots in North Carolina.
Specifically in Durham.
“Durham is both an incubator and a launching pad,” he said. “It just feels like the right place for me to dig my heels in right now.”
He recently purchased a home there, reaffirming his commitment to a Triangle music scene that continues attracting artists from across the country.
“There’s just a lot of good energy here,” he said. “The number of listening rooms, the number of people coming through — it’s really become a hub for a national and international network of musicians.”
Westerlund’s personal connection to Big Ears also runs deeper than this year’s performance.
His first visit to the festival came in 2018, when his mentor, the legendary percussionist Milford Graves, appeared on the bill. Westerlund spent time with Graves backstage before the performance, reconnecting with a musician who had profoundly shaped his thinking about rhythm and sound.
“That show was probably the best I’d ever heard his music sonically,” he said.
Moments like that — chance encounters between artists, audiences and ideas — are what make Big Ears unique.
Unlike most festivals, it isn’t built around genre silos or stylistic lanes. Instead, it encourages collisions between musical worlds.
“It’s not compartmentalized,” Westerlund said. “It bridges gaps between worlds.”
For a musician whose career increasingly lives in those spaces between categories, that philosophy feels especially fitting.
“You can have all these experiences that feel really different,” he said. “But there’s a connective thread between everything they program there.”
In other words, a festival that reflects Westerlund’s own musical outlook.
“It really embodies this idea,” he said, “that it’s all one thing.”
