5 Things To Do This Weekend, From A Free Jazz Fest To An Art Installation You Can Join

Outdoor art installations, a free jazz festival, an exciting new play — what more could you ask for in the waning days of July?

FIGMENT Boston | Saturday, July 28 and Sunday, July 29 | Rose Kennedy Greenway, Boston

This weekend, the Rose Kennedy Greenway will transform into an art installation, collaborative and multifaceted. The free event features work by a number of local artists, from a slow-motion video booth to a fuzzy, responsive “wall that feels” to a musical pinball machine made out of the guts of a broken piano.

Lowell Folk Festival | Friday, July 27 - Sunday, July 29 | Lowell

The (free) Lowell Folk Festival takes an expansive approach to that ever-ambiguous musical category, folk. Along with the usual folk fest suspects — blues, bluegrass, gospel, Celtic — this year’s event features the stylings of an African-American drum and fife group (Shardé Thomas & the Rising Star Fife and Drum, featured below), a Georgian choir, a mariachi band, a beatboxer and more.

Cambridge Jazz Festival | Sunday, July 29 | Danehy Park

Now in its fifth year, the Cambridge Jazz Festival offers locals a chance to experience the best and brightest of Boston’s jazz scene — for free. Featuring three-time Grammy Award-winning drummer and Berklee professor Terri Lyne Carrington.

‘Altarations’ | Through Aug. 26 | Dorchester Art Project, Boston

“Altarations,” a new exhibition at the Dorchester Art Project, explores shrines in all their multiplicity: as sites of worship, grief and healing. (Read more from The ARTery's Pamela Reynolds.)

'Leftovers' | Through Aug. 18 | Strand Theatre, Boston

Emerging playwright Josh Wilder steps into his own in Company One's “Leftovers,” a sharp modern-day fairy tale set in a black working-class Philadelphia neighborhood that follows the hopes and struggles of a pair of brothers as they enter adulthood. (Read Kilian Melloy's review of the production.)