“Philadelphia has a rich tradition of great Black women organists,” noted alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, a Philly native who came up under the wing of one of those prodigious players.

“One of my first mentors was Trudy Pitts,” he said of the keyboardist who started recording for the essential indie-jazz label Prestige in early 1960s. “I was 8 or 9 when she took an interest in me.”

The youngest artist ever tapped by SFJAZZ as a resident artistic director, the 28-year-old Wilkins opens his first four-night residency on March 26 with world premiere of the SFJAZZ-commissioned “Recitations,” featuring his quartet augmented by guitarist Marvin Sewell, clarinetist Holland Andrews, and vocalist Brontë Velez.

It’s no coincidence that the artist he’s built the piece around is pianist and organist Amina Claudine Myers, a near-legendary figure who was awarded the nation’s highest jazz honor as a National Endowment For the Arts Jazz Master in 2024.

Wilkins knew of Myers’ work before he experienced her full force back in 2018 at the memorial for pianist, composer and co-founder of Chicago’s Association For the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) Muhal Richard Abrams.

Wilkins was assisting Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Henry Threadgill at the Community Church of New York service when he heard Myers play Threadgill’s “incredible organ prelude,” Wilkins recalled. “That piece blew me away and I knew I needed to work with her.”

“Recitations” is inspired by Wilkins’ interest in Kirtan call-and-response chants, hymns, and folk songs. He’s working with Afro-Puerto Rican farmer and theologian Brontë Velez, co-steward of the School for Inclement Weather in coastal Sonoma County, to turn texts by the likes of Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott and French philosopher Frantz Fanon into an interactive score.

Kirtan chanting is often accompanied by the harmonium, and that’s one reference Wilkins is deploying for Myers to take the Hammond B3 “outside its usual old-school organ context,” Wilkins said. “There are a lot of cool possibilities that contrast the organ drenched in the blues.”

Another reference point for setting the text is German lieder, as he creates something like a series of short song cycles. But the goal is the antithesis of a recital. Though Wilkins says he hates it when musicians ask audiences to participate, “Recitation” is designed to have “a low barrier to entry, so everyone can sing along,” he said.

In that sense, he’s drawing on the earliest organ reference point. Growing up in church, he played the instrument as an adolescent. It’s only in recent years that he’s started figuring out ways to incorporate organ into his own music

“I’ve always been attracted to the instrument, but didn’t imagine a space for it until recently,” he said. “In my quartet, Micah Thomas has started doubling on organ. I’m thinking about that sound as crucial and central to how I’m imagining ‘Recitation,’ and I’m predicting we’re going to play this music throughout the West Coast tour.”

Before the SFJAZZ residency, Wilkins’ quartet with Thomas, bassist Ryoma Takenaga, and Oakland-reared drummer Savannah Harris plays Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society on March 22 and Kuumbwa Jazz Center on March 24.

Wilkins sits down with SFJAZZ Digital Director Ross Eustis for a listening session in Minor Auditorium on March 25, and the quartet joins forces with tenor sax great David Murray in the Joe Henderson Lab for four shows March 27-28, celebrating the group’s new album.

A three-volume record of the band (with regular drummer Kweku Sumbry), “Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard” documents one of the most exciting young groups in action at jazz’s most hallowed club. The first volume comes out on all formats March 20 (with the second and third digital-only volumes following on April 17 and May 15, respectively).

Foreshadowing the “Recitation” commission, Wilkins gave a preview of the album with the recently released track “Charanam.” Similar to how tenor saxophonist John Coltrane created extended improvisations based on raga, the quartet stretches out on Alice Coltrane’s devotional song from “Turiya Sings,” which she recorded in 1981 for worship in the Sai Anantam Ashram she founded in the Santa Monica Mountains.

After playing as a group for eight years, “it still feels like we are challenging each other and searching for the music to go to the next level,” said Thomas, who’s embraced the expansion of his keyboard responsibilities.

“I see my job in large part as orchestrating the activity of the band, and organ allows me more options in terms of soundscapes I can create. Immanuel’s writing is incredibly diverse, but through all the different kinds of compositions he writes we are always trying to get to a deep feeling.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.

IMMANUEL WILKINS QUARTET

When & where: 4:30 p.m. Sunday, March 22 at Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay; $50-$60 ($12 livestream); bachddsoc.org; 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 24 at Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz; $46.62 $47.25. www.kuumbwajazz.org.

Listening Party: 7:30 p.m. March 25 at the SFJAZZ Center, San Francisco; $19; www.sfjazz.org;

“Recitations” world premiere: 7:30 p.m. March 26 at the SFJAZZ Center; $34-$75; www.sfjazz.org.

With David Murray: 7 & 8:30 p.m. March 27-28 at SFJAZZ Center; $44; www.sfjazz.org.