Jazz picks for the weekend:
Sunday: Turtle Island Quartet: Have You Ever Been…? The Grammy-winning classical crossover group — violinists David Balakrishnan and Mads Tolling, violist Jeremy Kittel, cellist Mark Summer — is also an improvising group, which allows them to play things the Guarneri and Juilliard quartets can’t: Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” for example, and Monk’s “Who Do You Think We Are?” Founding member Balakrishnan has been a Jimi Hendrix fan since his teens; the quartet’s just-released latest recording, “Have You Ever Been…?” (Telarc, 2010) has been a lifetime in the making. It includes a suite of pieces from “Electric Ladyland,” an original work by Balakrishnan inspired by Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” and other delights. Here’s a video introduction. The quartet gave a splendid performance at the Dakota last November; I hope we’re becoming a regular touring stop for them. One night, one set. 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12, Dakota, 1010 Nicollet Mall ($30).

Pamela Espeland keeps a Twin Cities live jazz calendar, blogs about jazz at Bebopified and tweets about jazz on Twitter.