Joe Farnsworth

Joe Farnsworth, whose drumming has been the driving wheel in bands led by McCoy Tyner, Benny Golson, Harold Mabern, and Pharoah Sanders, is coming to grips with the idea of generational ascendancy. “Usually I’m getting behind an older great. This gig in Moscow was with Peter Washington, Mark Whitfield, Craig Handy, and a Russian piano player—Yakov Okun—and it was interesting to be in a group of people your own age, you know? I guess we’re all getting older.”

Older maybe, but not old—neither in spirit nor sound. The overseas performance he’s referring to, at the Esse Jazz Club in Moscow, took place this past August 24 and was an eye-opener for Farnsworth, being his first taste of touring since lockdown. “I was a little nervous about leaving New York, [it] being my first flight since the tours stopped. But I’d give the experience an A-plus,” says the man who could call Smoke, Manhattan’s uptown venue, his true home. “Once I got there, it was beautiful. The people were at first a little wait-and-see about the music, but once we started hitting, man, you felt it right away.”

Farnsworth’s 2020 Smoke Sessions album Time to Swing—featuring Wynton Marsalis, Kenny Barron, and Peter Washington—and its 2021 follow-up City of Sounds demonstrate that he’s assumed a leading position in today’s postbop drum hierarchy, humbly and confidently. He’s exceedingly proud of the music on Time to Swing, which was crafted to match the level of talent on the project. “I’ve been waiting for the right time to ask Wynton. Waited, waited, waited. We worked together years ago and I played with him on the Live at the House album [2005]. Then we were doing the soundtrack to [2019] and I just asked him and he couldn’t have been nicer.”