Jon Balke - Diverted Travels

“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.