RECESS is a new immersive performance created by Odean Pope and Immanuel Wilkins that transforms a North Philadelphia warehouse into a sculptural playground for sound. Part bandstand, part score, part jungle gym, the installation—designed by Wilkins and Rachael Elliott—invites audiences inside a living model of improvisation. Theater artist Jennifer Kidwell acts as guide and facilitator in this experience of “radical play.”

Philadelphia has its own creative music vernacular—a common legacy built of technical mastery, purposeful resistance, and joyful exploration. From the North 33rd Street rowhouse where John Coltrane refined his sound, to the ecstatic collective experiments of the Sun Ra Arkestra in Germantown, to the present day, Philadelphia’s jazz scene has embodied forward momentum and collegial experimentation.

This language continues in the work of Philadelphia artists across generations. Odean Pope—who studied closely with John Coltrane in his youth and later toured extensively with Max Roach while developing his own groundbreaking Saxophone Choir—has devoted his life to both innovation and mentorship. A central figure in the city’s musical life for more than half a century, he has shaped generations of improvisers through performance and teaching. Saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins began studying with Pope as a child and has since emerged as one of the leading voices of his generation. Together, they have created RECESS, a new commissioned work and immersive performance environment that explores lineage, memory, and improvisation.

Wilkins designed the sculptural installation as a 3-D graphic score that evokes “play” from three dimensions: as one “plays” a score, it is a process waiting to be discovered; as one “plays” an instrument, it produces and transforms sound; and as one “plays” as a child, its visual presence conjures the urban playground. This literally sets the stage for a collective encounter to explore ideas of radical play. A living score of memory, movement, and creative risk, RECESS collapses the separations among sound, thought, memory, and possibility.