Get together at Free First Saturday in May and enjoy folk singer Alastair Moock’s rompin’ concert, featuring tunes for the whole family! Then, visit the exhibition Jason Moran to learn about jazz—and let the musical inspiration carry you throughout the day.
Gallery admission is free for everyone on the first Saturday of each month from 10 am to 6 pm, with a variety of family activities scheduled from 10 am to 3 pm.
Art-Making: Build Your Own Set
10 am–3 pm
Drawing inspiration from Jason Moran’s mixed-media set installations, make your own 3D set in this activity led by local artist Jennifer Nevitt.
Art-Making: Listen and Draw
10 am–3 pm
Allow the jazz greats (like John Coltrane, Mary Lou Williams, and Charles Mingus) to lead your hand in a free-drawing exercise.
Performance: Shake Your Roots
11 am
Singin’ and dancin’—that’s what it’s all about! Alastair Moock will lead kids in sing-and-dance-alongs of classic American tunes, including songs by Woody Guthrie, Mississippi John Hurt, and Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Lead Belly), and his own award-winning originals. Kids will be up on their feet, singing along, moving their bodies, and learning new dances.
Performance: Music and Social Change
1 pm
Moock will introduce kids to the music of peaceful resistance (labor rights, civil rights, and the antiwar movement), and they’ll become acquainted with the major songs and singers of the eras, including Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, and the Freedom Singers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). This is not purely a history lesson: Moock shows that powerful political music is still around today, if you know where to look.
May Free First Saturday 2018 is presented in conjunction with exhibition Jason Moran (April 26–August 26).
Alastair Moock is a 2013 Grammy nominee, two-time Parents’ Choice Gold Medal winner, and a recipient of the ASCAP Joe Raposo Children’s Music Award. He has toured throughout Europe and America, performing for adults and kids alike. Like his boyhood hero, Woody Guthrie, Moock believes in the power of music to reach all people—young and old, far and wide, for all occasions.
Jennifer Nevitt received a BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1996 and an MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2011. She is influenced by the idea that real life expands our concept of art, using painting, sculpture, and textiles to explore narratives pertaining to the human experience of dwelling and being.
Road closures around the Walker may impact your trip, check the MnDOT website to plan your route in advance.
)