Summer jazz series will rock the Walker Art Center's garden once again

On Thursday night, for the first time in nearly two years, music lovers can flock to Walker Art Center's hillside and see a live band performing on the stage below.

The occasion is the first of three concerts — one for each month of the summer — that the Walker is presenting under the rubric Hillside Jazz (Present Tense). More like the Walker's old Music and Movies in the Park series than its signature Rock the Garden showcase, Hillside Jazz is free to the public. And while food trucks will be nearby, patrons can bring their own meals and refreshments for a picnic on a blanket.

Philip Bither, the Walker's senior curator for performing arts, calls the series "a gift" to celebrate the gradual return of live performance. Before the pandemic hit, Bither had been interested in booking two of the bands — Irreversible Entanglements and Jaimie Branch's Fly or Die — as part of the array of indoor performances he presents each year.

"We've had a long history with vanguard jazz and new music," Bither said, "and these performers are part of a rising next generation of jazz artists who are very eclectic in their tastes and style, are connecting with younger audiences and are integrating social justice and racial justice issues into their music."

To complete the series, he added 25-year-old vibraphonist Joel Ross, whose Good Vibes ensemble includes 23-year-old saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins.

The Walker initially planned on giving out tickets to a select amount of socially distanced sitting circles. That changed in mid-May, when Gov. Tim Walz lifted restrictions on outdoor events.

"Now we are encouraging people to wear masks and offering specific spaces for those who would rather be in their own sphere without people close to them," Bither said. "But we are also leaving it up to patrons to determine how close to the stage and other people they want to get."

Here is a preview of the shows, all starting at 7 p.m.

Few groups better embody the elements — emotional immediacy, topical relevance, spontaneous improvisation — that "Present Tense" is meant to convey.

A quartet of free-jazz instrumentalists interacting with spoken word artist Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa), the band comprises two separate groups that performed at a protest against police brutality in 2015 and decided to join forces. Along with jazz and spoken word, there are elements of punk, hip-hop, sound collage and electronics.

"Trust" and "telepathy" are words that saxophonist Keir Neuringer used in a phone interview last week to describe the group's performing process, as they take cues from a signal riff from the horns or rhythm section, or a snatch of verse from Ayewa.

"Her poetry becomes an instrument and our instruments become words," Neuringer said, adding that Ayewa refers to the group's music as "liberation technology." Irresistible Entanglements just completed their third album, which Neuringer said "stakes out new territory musically and emotionally" and is "focused on healing." This will be their first gig since recording it, performed approximately three miles from where George Floyd was murdered.

Another ensemble fronted by a powerful woman, in this case protean trumpeter Jaimie Branch, who added pugnacious vocals on the politically charged "Prayer for Amerikka pt 1 & 2," from Fly or Die's last studio album, "Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise."

With a quartet that includes in-demand drummer Chad Taylor and the string duo of cellist Lester St. Louis and bassist Jason Ajemian, Fly or Die swoops and soars from punk-jazz to martial swing and bebop to anthems that variously plead and insist.

Good vibes indeed. Ross is a single-mallet whirlwind on the instrument, with a thrilling knack for timing and flow that can suddenly buffer up into a resonant shimmer. His aptly named 2018 debut album on Blue Note, "KingMaker," earned raves not only for his vibes work but his compositions and ensemble interplay.

Speaking of auspicious debuts, Good Vibes saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins took the jazz world by storm with his 2020 Blue Note debut, "Omega," with songs like "Warriors" and "Ferguson — an American Tradition" taking on added frisson when Floyd's murder occurred shortly before its release.

Britt Robson is a Minneapolis journalist and critic.