An extraordinary cross-generational jazz collaboration is taking shape in a former PECO station

Saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins seems determined to engage more of his audiences’ senses than just their ears.

In performances of his album Blues Blood in 2025, a chef prepared an Afro Caribbean stew live on stage, adding a mouth-watering sensorial component to the show. A 2024 performance at Harlem Stage featured him playing through a Dr. Seuss-like megaphone, a striking construction that made a visual impact equal to the inventive power of the saxophonist’s musical voice.

Wilkins is, undoubtedly, making serious music. At 28, the Upper Darby native is regarded as one of the leading jazz voices of his generation. He has released a series of acclaimed albums via the iconic Blue Note label, the most recent being a three-volume live recording captured at the storied Village Vanguard.

But there is also a sense of playfulness to these onstage provocations.

They reawaken the childlike connotations implied when we refer to musicians as “playing” their instruments, a notion that can be obscured by countless hours of practice, years of dedication to the craft, miles logged on the road, or the rigor of navigating intricate, complex compositions.

Over the next two weekends, Wilkins will strive to recapture that sense of playfulness inside a North Philadelphia warehouse, in partnership with a renowned Philly saxophonist six decades his elder, and that much further removed from the carefree days of youth.

Presented by Ars Nova Workshop, “RECESS” is a generation-spanning collaboration teaming Wilkins with the venerable Odean Pope, 87.

Both will lead ensembles in an immersive performance framed inside a combination playground and bandstand designed by Wilkins and Brooklyn-based artist Rachael Elliott, with performance artist Jennifer Kidwell acting as guide. The stage will be integrated into an interactive sculpture, offering varied elements to spark what Wilkins refers to as “radical play.”

“I’m always trying to tap into my inner child,” said Wilkins last week from his home in Brooklyn. “I feel like there’s so much you can learn from that: a boundlessness and a real aesthetic danger.”

Working with Pope may be one way to facilitate that return to childhood. The two met when Wilkins was a precocious 7-year-old student at the Clef Club of Jazz and Performing Arts. Pope took the young saxophonist under his wing, beginning a mentorship and musical partnership that has sustained until today.

“Immanuel is not only a great instrumentalist, improviser, composer and educator,” Pope said. “He’s a great person. At this period in my career, it’s amazing for me to come together with Immanuel and develop some great music.”

“RECESS” grew out of conversations between the pair, as Pope shared stories of his early friendships with the legendary saxophonist John Coltrane and the elusive pianist Hassan Ibn Ali. Wilkins sensed that these youthful experiences, “oftentimes in each other’s mothers’ basements,” took place in locations that were transformed into creative playgrounds.

“I started thinking about the landscape of Philadelphia as functioning as a kind of abstracted play space,” Wilkins explained.

The playground that is being crafted inside the Power Market, a former PECO station on West Oxford Street, takes on the form of an abstracted, industrial jungle gym, constructed from pipes and ramps. The installation serves as both environment and graphic score for Wilkins’ improvised composition.

He played his sax into a spectrogram, a device for depicting the frequencies of an audio signal. The resultant graph then helped to inspire the form of the installation that Elliott designed, drawing on inspiration from the Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck.

“I hope that we can remove the membrane between the musicians and the audience,” she said. “Concerts tend to be very one directional. You’re there to receive the music that the musicians are giving you. We wanted to facilitate a space that invites people to feel free.”

Though Wilkins’ work takes place more often than not in traditional jazz venues, he has increasingly sought to breakdown the walls between performer and audience. “RECESS” will not be the first time that he’s worked with his mentor in an unconventional environment: In 2021, he and Pope performed on the grounds of the Woodlands cemetery in West Philly to celebrate the autumn equinox.

“I thought about three aspects of what play could mean,” he said. “You can look at this playground and play it as though it’s a piece of sheet music. You could also play it like an instrument — interact with it, make sound with it. Then there’s the obvious sense of a child on a playground.”

In discussing the project, Wilkins seems most excited at the prospect of what his longtime mentor will make of the space. Despite the decades that separate Pope from his days on sliding boards and swing sets, the octogenarian sax master is eager to play with his younger compatriots — in every sense of the word.

“We’re playing on the edge, so you don’t know what’s going to come out,” Pope said. “I’m really having a good time.”

“RECESS” is on 3 p.m., May 3, May 10. Power Market, 1835 W. Oxford Street. Free. arsnovaworkshop.org