With Rising Grace in 2016, the Austrian guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel confirmed his stature on the world stage all the more firmly – Brad Mehldau was his pianist, Ambrose Akinmusire his trumpeter, longtime Mehldau collaborator Larry Grenadier was on bass. Where The River Goes is the next chapter, with the same band save for the idiosyncratic Eric Harland coming in for the comparably exciting Brian Blade on drums. Though Muthspiel albums incline nowadays toward a mix of solo meditations and probing collective speculations over nailed-down grooves, there's a good enough balance of both for this set to intrigue both freefall-jazz voyagers and pursuers of blues and leftfield perceptions of swing. Several tracks have solo guitar or piano intros, but Muthspiel's soft, latin-strummed opening to the title-track turns into an evocatively Kenny Wheeler-reminiscent piece following Akinmusire's yearning statement of the theme. The restless melody of ‘For Django’ becomes a conversational story for the band, a method typical of the whole session. Mehldau introduces a rolling, jangling, gospel-ly feel to the vibrant ‘Clearing’, contrastingly developed in fast-changing, freewheeling improv. Muthspiel hides multiple melodies in his acoustic solo ‘Buenos Aires’, ‘Someday My Prince Was Gone’ sounds like a prickly, prodding collective improvisation, ‘Blueshead’ is an infectiously bright and boppish tune that draws an interval-leaping Akinmusire break, a sleek, languidly slurring Muthspiel solo, and a dazzling left-hand-right-hand personal dialogue from Mehldau. It's as classy a session as the personnel would imply, if extendedly pensive at times.