This is trumpeter Akinmusire's second album on the Blue Note label that follows the critically acclaimed When the Heart Emerges Glistening from 2011. It is a far more rounded work, with a conceptual unity that is preserved despite the comings and goings of guests that include Charles Altura on guitar, vocalists and a string quartet to his regular, working ensemble. Although Akinmusire sees himself as part of a trumpet continuum that stretches back to Louis Armstrong's groundbreaking work in the 1920s, he is of the 21st century and is open to all lines of creative input. Thus subtle shades of hip hop rhythms, ear catching writing for string quartet and voice as well as the ‘traditional’ trumpet/tenor quintet sound immortalised by the Blue Note label back in the 1950s – the live version of ‘Richard (conduit)’ that lasts for 16 minutes and blows up a storm to climax the album – all rub shoulders without losing the album's narrative flow. As a writer, arranger and conceptualist, Akinmusire succeeds in moving beyond the shadow cast by Blue Note's posthumous jazz greats by asserting his own independent vision of the music that looks both ways, to the past and to the future. Rather than cutting ties with ‘the tradition’, he builds, expands and develops on what has gone before.