A conversation moderated by music journalist Nate Chinen with MacArthur Fellows Tomeka Reid (2022) and Chris Thile (2012), artists whose work challenges conventional boundaries between composition and improvisation, individual creativity, and collaboration. This conversation will invite audiences to understand genre not as a rigid category, but as a living, evolving organism—and to witness how two artists rooted in distinct American traditions have spent their careers dismantling boundaries.
March 28, 2026
9:30 a.m. ET
Blue Note Lounge
635 Sixth Avenue
Knoxville, TN
