For those unaware, drummer Joe Farnsworth sets out on a bold new path in answer to the question IN WHAT DIRECTION ARE YOU HEADED? and features a stellar all-star quintet with guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, pianist Julius Rodriguez, and bassist Robert Hurst.

IN WHAT DIRECTION ARE YOU HEADED? marks a turning point in Farnsworth’s career, as he’s assembled a new quintet featuring not his renowned forebears but esteemed talents from his own generation and a younger, rising class.

While he has honed his estimable skills behind the kit through decades of work with some of jazz’s greatest elders – iconic names like McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders, Harold Mabern, Horace Silver, Benny Golson, Cedar Walton, Barry Harris, Curtis Fuller, George Coleman, Johnny Griffin, Lou Donaldson, Cecil Payne, Kenny Barron, and others, in recent years, he’s seen many of his mentors pass away.

1. Terra Nova (7:13)
2. Filters (9:29)
3. In What Direction Are You Headed? (10:33)
4. Composition 4 (5:00)
5. Anyone but You (7:24)
6. Safe Corners (6:44)
7. Bobby No Bags (5:31)
8. Someday We’ll All Be Free

On what is a quite exceptional, elegantly crafted new recording, the first track we hear is the fluctuating, almost ethereal Terra Nova and that is backed by the sweepingly-affluent Filters, the low slung, joyously-sculpted, titular In What Direction Are You Headed?, and then comes the low slung, midnight-sculpted balladry within Composition 4.

Next up we get the upbeat, gently frenetic, always playful Anyone but You which itself followed by the playful, flirty even Safe Corners, the album rounding out on the upright bass-led jaunt Bobby No Bags, closing on the effervescently flourishing Someday We’ll All Be Free.

“I’ve spent my whole life trying to play with great musicians like Cedar Walton and George Coleman and Harold Mabern, and I have been very fortunate to achieve those goals,” Farnsworth says. “Meanwhile, there are all these guys my age and younger players doing a whole new thing. It’s time for me to take the lessons I’ve learned from those elders and develop my own thing.”

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