Photo Courtesy of Magic Triangle Jazz Series

Shakers n' Bakers

The group Shakers n’ Bakers explores a most unusual end of the musical flowchart, offering avant-jazz interpretations of Shaker “vision songs.” Those works, also known as “gift songs,” were spontaneously sung by Shaker women in trance-like states, and often in non-existent languages. Their composition was apparently attributed to spirits.

Shakers n’ Bakers, working from archived notations of the songs, launch into jazz-based versions of them, propelled by adventurous avant leanings that take the songs into sonic territory that sounds simutaneously homespun and experimental, especially when the jazzier elements bump up against Mary LaRose’s vocals. It’s safe to say there’s little, if anything, like it.

The band (LaRose, reed player Jeff Lederer, vocalist Miles Griffith, electric harpsichordist Jamie Saft, bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Allison Miller) plays this week as part of WMUA’s Magic Triangle Jazz Series.

March 29, 8 p.m., $7/students, $12/general, Unitarian Society, 220 Main St., Northampton, (413) 562-3990.