Burnt Sugar

Burnt Sugar is a big musical mixing bowl spilling over with jazz, funk, blues, hip hop, and rock. Add some African beats and a little contemporary classical composition, and you’ve got what could be the world’s most eclectic jazz ensemble, one whose inspiration comes from such diverse sources as Miles Davis, Metallica, and Mobb Deep. Each member—there are a dozen, including African Americans, Middle Easterners, Europeans, Asians, and even a Minnesotan—also lends his own musical influences, and an instrument or two, to the band’s jubilantly raucous happenings. To reign in this torrent of grooves, Burnt Sugar founder Greg Tate (also a journalist for the likes of the Village Voice and the New York Times) serves as conductor, using hand gestures and baton movements he invented expressly for the purpose of unifying this improvisational force. 416 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-375-7622; www.walkerart.org