KIDD JORDAN

Presented by Bursts! Music Festival. At ONCE Lounge & Ballroom, Somerville,

June 3 at 8 p.m. Tickets $25, advance $20, students $10. 617-285-0167, www.oncesomerville.com. At Accurate Records Loft, Somerville, June 4 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $20, students $10. 617-872-1544, www.brownpapertickets.com.

If you’ve never heard of New Orleans saxophonist Kidd Jordan, who’ll perform at separate Somerville venues Friday and Saturday, discard two assumptions arising from his name and hometown. First, he’s no kid; Jordan turned 81 on May 5. Second, he doesn’t specialize in traditional jazz or other genres typically associated with New Orleans. Kidd Jordan is a master of free jazz, even if that’s not necessarily his own term for it.

“I don’t know about ‘free,’ ’’ Jordan clarifies by phone. “I’m an improviser. I improvise. I play what my environment gives me.’’

His environment this weekend will be the Bursts! Music Festival, where he’ll perform with guitarist Donald Miller (of the noise trio Borbetomagus), drummer/percussionist Avreeayl Ra (a Sun Ra Arkestra veteran), and rising tenor saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. Jooklo Duo (saxophonist Virginia Gent and percussionist David Vanzan) will open, and likely will join the others for the finales both nights.

Jordan has worked with Miller “about two, three times,’’ he says, but doesn’t know the others. Not that that worries him.

“Whatever they do, I’m gonna do my thing on top of what they doin’, and hopefully it will work,’’ he says. “It’s gonna be in the moment, I can tell you that. I’m not gonna bring a bag of tricks with me.’’

The shows are being produced by the father-and-son team of Bill and Matt Goldberg, with the elder Goldberg’s college buddy Russ Gershon playing host Saturday at his Accurate Records loft. Gershon, who leads the Either/Orchestra, considers these rare local appearances by Jordan all the more special for the history Jordan brings with him.

“Kidd Jordan is one of the last of the musicians that plays free music that grew up through the whole history of jazz,’’ he explains. “He played bebop as a teenager, and of course being a New Orleanian, you’re just steeped in so many different musical traditions there, related to R&B and blues and New Orleans-style marching music and all that stuff. So he’s one of the last people that really embodies that whole arc of jazz, from the earliest New Orleans roots to free jazz to post-Albert Ayler music.

“Because he has all those elements in his playing and all of that history in his life,’’ Gershon continues, “there’s a wonderful blues quality in his playing, which is what I love about the freer music that really moves me, from Ornette [Coleman] to Albert Ayler. I even hear it in Roscoe Mitchell and the Art Ensemble [of Chicago] guys. I hear the blues. There’s a real earthy quality of rootedness to all of the playing that makes me want to listen to it. There’s some modern jazz and free music that just doesn’t have that for me.’’

Other types of music also inform Jordan’s playing and enhance its accessibility. He honed classical chops in graduate school in Illinois (he considers Chicago his second home), and spent three decades teaching at Southern University and leading summer band camps for New Orleans schoolchildren, some of whom became better known than he is. (“Donald Harrison used to play free, free, free,’’ Jordan recalls. “Branford [Marsalis] didn’t.’’) Jordan avoids playing written music, but used to write lots of it for his students; one of his tunes, “Kidd Jordan’s Second Line,’’ became a staple for the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and similar groups.

Jordan kept busy moonlighting as a working musician during his teaching years, backing Aretha Franklin and other stars when they passed through town. “Ray Charles, Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, Leonard Williams. . . . I was at Motown working with Stevie Wonder when he was 12 years old,’’ he notes. “I’ve been around the horn with all that kind of stuff. People used to come to New Orleans without a band. They’d pick a band up when they come. Sometimes I’d go out with some of them for two or three weeks in the summertime. I’d go out with ’em and catch another one goin’ back.’’

Those days, though, are behind him. “Now that I’m into my later years that’s all I want to do,’’ says Jordan of the unbounded improvisations he now focuses on exclusively. “I don’t want to do nothing else but this.’’

Free jazz, he acknowledges, can be off-putting to some. But Jordan remains devoted to it, inspired by the example of John Coltrane, who turned resolutely to free jazz at the height of his fame despite alienating many fans.

“The last time I saw Trane, I asked him how did he come out of ‘Giant Steps’ to what he was doin’,’’ says Jordan. “He had about three or four people in the joint. Everybody had walked out. At the end there wasn’t nobody but him and Elvin [Jones] playing, and that’s the most powerful music I ever heard in my life. Trane said, ‘Man, they all leavin’, but I got to do what I got to do.’ ’’

Jordan has experienced some of that himself through the years, but hopes for good shows this weekend. “I hope the people don’t go runnin’ out of the building,’’ he adds with a chuckle. “But if they do, it won’t be the first time.’’

KIDD JORDAN

Presented by Bursts! Music Festival. At ONCE Lounge & Ballroom, Somerville, June 3 at 8 p.m. Tickets $25, advance $20, students $10. 617-285-0167, www.oncesomerville.com. At Accurate Records Loft, Somerville, June 4 at 8 p.m. Tickets: $20, students $10. 617-872-1544, www.brownpapertickets.com.

Bill Beuttler can be reached at bill@billbeuttler.com.