Big Ears and renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma unveil Knoxville festival celebrating Appalachia

Knoxville's tentpole music festival Big Ears is partnering with world-renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma to bring a new cultural experience to Knoxville this spring.

Separate from Big Ears Festival, "Our Common Nature: An Appalachian Celebration" will bring artists, dancers, and storytellers together to celebrate the region's culture May 25-27.

Big Ears announced the new event at a Jan. 31 celebration in advance the 10th Big Ears Festival, which takes place March 30 to April 2 in downtown Knoxville.

More:Why attendance at Big Ears Festival in downtown Knoxville skyrocketed in 2022

The main event of "Our Common Nature" will take place May 26 at World's Fair Park, Big Ears founder Ashley Capps said.

"It's all going to culminate on Friday night, May 26, at the World's Fair Park, when Yo-Yo Ma joined by guests like Rhiannon Giddens, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer and a number of local musicians, some of whom don't know they're going to be there yet," Capps said at the celebration. "There will be a village created at the World's Fair Park with food and all of these elements as well."

Other festivities include regional food, arts and crafts, poetry, music, square dancing and puppetry. It aims to bring diverse voices from Appalachia, including Indigenous, European, Latinx, Black and more.

Why Yo-Yo Ma is coming to Knoxville

Capps said he had been in talks to bring Yo-Yo Ma to Big Ears when in 2022 he learned about Ma's "Our Common Nature" event series. Ma's assistant asked Capps if he would help organize an event in Knoxville for the Appalachian region.

"Last May, I visited the Great Smoky Mountains, and I fell in love," Ma said in a video shown at the announcement. "What I realized was to fall in love with the beauty and complexity of the region is to fall in love all over again with the soul of America. On May 26, I will be back in the region in Knoxville, the great World's Fair Park."

Capps said tickets go on sale 9 a.m. Feb. 3 at ourcommonnature.org.

Thile will perform May 25 at the Bijou Theatre, and Giddens will play the venue May 27.

"There will be other events we'll be letting people know about that will be unveiled in the coming weeks as they all come into focus, because there are so many exciting discussions," Capps said. "Yo-Yo has quite an expansive vision, and this is step one of realizing that vision of bringing people together, communities together, to explore our common nature and our relationship to the natural world, which is why the Smoky Mountains connection is so important."

"Our Common Nature" is a multi-year, multi-location project by Yo-Yo Ma. He has hosted events in Maine and Hawaii "to explore the many ways in which culture connects us to the natural world and to one another," according to a press release.

This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Big Ears and Yo-Yo Ma unveil Knoxville concert celebrating Appalachia