On THE BIG ROOM, drummer JOE FARNSWORTH leads an intergenerational sextet into a place of transcendent creativity and imagination. The album features a stellar cast of player/composers blending modern masters and rising stars: trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, vibraphonist Joel Ross, pianist Emmet Cohen, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura.

The title references a concept that Farnsworth heard about for years from some of the legendary masters that he has counted as mentors and collaborators—artists like Max Roach, Jackie McLean, and Ron Carter. “The Big Room isn’t a place,” Farnsworth relates, “but a spiritual dimension, a vast, wide-open terrain that only the most gifted of artists could reach. It’s a place where all of the discipline, rules, and language that a musician spends a lifetime mastering suddenly fade, and pure, transcendent creation can occur.

Long associated with dyed-in-the-wool tradition, Farnsworth hasn’t departed entirely from his roots. But in recent years, he’s stretched the tether much further and now has assembled a gifted and adventurous band able to forge its own pathway to that elusive realm.