Diverted Travels”, the third ECM album by the pan-Scandinavian Magnetic North Orchestra, extends the radius of the work already documented on “Further” (recorded 1993) and “Kyanos” (recorded 2001) and confirms once again that Jon Balke is one of the most unique writer-arrangers in contemporary jazz. “Diverted Travels” features a radically revised line-up – only the leader and trumpeter Per Jørgensen remain from the original band, but the music, which continues to move in mysterious ways, with ever-arresting harmonic variety and textural differentiation, and a delicate equilibrium between the composed and the free, is unmistakably Balke’s.
Diverted Travels
Jon Balke, Magnetic North Orchestra
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04:47 - 2Nutating
03:59 - 3Sink
01:06 - 4Columns
03:30 - 5Deep
01:33 - 6In Patches
05:58 - 7Ondular
02:44 - 8Downslope
04:55 - 9Rivers
03:32 - 10Climb
04:05 - 11Inside
00:52 - 12And On
06:47 - 13The Drive
04:30 - 14Falling
02:38
His goal when he formed the Magnetic North Orchestra in 1992 was to develop a new music that drew upon the jazz tradition, contemporary composition, and diverse non-Western forms, especially North and West African music, of which Jon Balke has much practical experience. But, from the outset, it was also one of Balke’s self-imposed directives that his writing for the band would most stringently steer clear of any hint of glib crossover or fusion: “The concept is based on avoiding application of elements of these forms, and rather developing a new kind of pulsating chamber music by learning from the inner energy that these forms possess.” Balke’s writing for “Diverted Travels” is indeed chamber music that pulsates.
The first, sprawling edition of Magnetic North combined a large percussion group, a string quartet and a jazz sextet, “to explore the palette of sound and possibilities that this instrumentation could give.” Since then, an eight-piece nucleus has been Balke’s preferred touring model, but the smaller units have retained much of the sound-colour and timbral potential of the original group while operating with increasingly subtlety, as the leader continues to explore “the balance between polyphonic writing and improvisation.”
In July 2001, in Copenhagen, Balke again had an opportunity to direct a very large ensemble: Grand Magnetic, as he called it, augmented Magnetic North with a 14-piece string group. In this context Balke met Bjarte Eike, Peter Spissky and Thomas Pitt who were section leaders within the ensemble: “After that, I started sketching, working out how to integrate the composed playing inside the ongoing improvised playing, and let the two elements feed each other continuously, instead of alternating. I found I wanted to approach the dialectics between the composed and the improvised in a different way.” This realisation led to the disbanding of the existing line-up.
Changes took place in the winter of 2002/3 and the new group was fully fluent with Balke’s concept by the time of its September tour which found Magnetic North racing through nine countries. Of the new repertoire, Balke says, “I’ve been happy to find that I can include quite complex compositions and sort of ‘hide’ them inside the music without losing the flow of dynamic energy that makes spontaneous improvised music so great to play and listen to.”
As Richard Cook, reviewing this group’s performance at the “Music of ECM” festival in Dornbirn, Austria, wrote in Jazz Review: “Balke’s deft interweaving of timbres and sonic contrasts was so absolutely refined that there seemed to be no false step anywhere. Compositions and themes within compositions came and went and left traces on the air like slowly evaporating smoke-trails”.
YEAR | DATE | VENUE | LOCATION | |
2025 | May 31 | Tarquinia festival | Tarquinia, Italy | |
2025 | September 04 | PUNKT festival | Kristiansand, Norway | |
2025 | September 05 | National Radio House-Store Studio | Oslo, Norway |
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