For those not in the know, drummer Joe Farnsworth first heard about “The Big Room” as he sat next to the iconic Max Roach at the famed NYC club Bradley’s, watching another one of his heroes, Billy Higgins. Roach used the term to compliment Higgins on the heights he achieved at the pinnacle of a drum solo.

The term was echoed time and again by several of the masters who Farnsworth counted as mentors and collaborators. He was given an onstage glimpse into The Big Room by Ron Carter, then received a lesson in its parameters from Jackie McLean. As Farnsworth relates, “Jackie talked about being at such a height of greatness that you’re able to go into The Big Room, where there’s no furniture and no paintings on the walls. You’re able to arrange the room anyway that you want, but only a few people ever get there – greats like John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman.”

The Big Room, as Farnsworth describes it, isn’t a place, some palatial venue representative of commercial success. Instead, it’s a spiritual dimension, a vast, wide-open terrain that only the most gifted of artists could reach. It means attaining a plane of artistic being where all of the discipline, rules, and language that a musician has spent a lifetime mastering suddenly fade into meaninglessness and pure, transcendent creation can occur.

1. Continuance
2. What Am I Waiting For?
3. All Said and Done
4. The Big Room
5. Radical
6. I Fall in Love Too Easily
7. You Already Know
8. Prime Time

Assembling a band of composer-performers, Farnsworth invited each member to contribute compositions to the repertoire for the album, which opens on the rhythmically frenetic Continuance and the luxuriant What Am I Waiting For? and then brings us the free flowing All Said and Done and the sparklingly cultured title track The Big Room.

This immerse soundscape continues onward with the full on, foot to the floor blues/jazz vibe of Radical which is itself backed by the languishing, ornately hued I Fall in Love Too Easily, the set rounding out on the drum-charged musical adventure You Already Know, coming to an all too soon close on the joyfully melodious Prime Time.

On The Big Room, his brilliant new release on Smoke Sessions Records, Farnsworth leads an intergenerational sextet into that boundless space of the imagination.

Due out July 25th, 2025, the album features a stellar cast of player/composers blending modern masters and rapidly rising stars: trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, vibraphonist Joel Ross, pianist Emmet Cohen, and bassist Yasushi Nakamura.

Musicians:
Joe Farnsworth (drums)
Jeremy Pelt (trumpet)
Sarah Hanahan (saxophone)
Joel Ross (vibraphone)
Emmet Cohen (piano)
Yasushi Nakamura (bass)

Official Purchase Link