Jon Balke – Noriaki (2023) [Official Digital Download 24bit/48kHz]

Jon Balke – Noriaki (2023)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 41:24 minutes | 376 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © NYE NOR

Molde author Endre Ruset has had great success with his poetry book, Noriaki, which was published by Flamme Forlag in 2017. It has been called jump poetry, as the poems throughout use the name Noriaki, after the legendary Japanese ski jumper Noriaki Kasai. Since 2014, Noriaki has also been a tea ceremony and an evolving art project with musician Stian Omenås. In 2022, Endre and Stian decided to make a recording of the Noriaki book.

They were joined by pianist Jon Balke and recorded the disc over two days in Hov Kirke in Norway. The result was a beautiful journey through different sounds and moods, from experimental minimalism to magnificent lyrical passages. Energetic, attentive and focussed. A dreamy poetic journey from Molde to Japan, through the different seasons and all its senses. The poems are short, but full of grandeur. The music immediately takes hold of the words and accelerates into the unknown, but always finds its way, security and landing – like a steady ski jump.

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Jon Balke, Amina Alaoui – Siwa (2009) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jon Balke, Amina Alaoui – Siwa (2009)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 01:04:19 minutes | 1,27 GB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © ECM

Magical music, trailing deep roots. The listener is at first struck by the power of Amina Alaoui’s voice, soaring above Jon Balke’s remarkable compositions for baroque ensemble – with soloists drawn from jazz, scattered improvisational traditions, and the world of early music. Behind this remarkable musical integration is a web of philosophical, historical, and literary interconnections, as Balke and Alaoui set texts from Sufi poets, Christian mystics, troubadours and more and – inspired by the tolerant and creative spirit of medieval Al-Andalus – ponder what was lost to the bonfires of the Inquisition. Setting new standards in transcultural music, SIWAN shows what can be made today when artists of the most divergent background pool their energies.

On his latest project, Siwan, Norwegian pianist and composer Jon Balke blends a variety of traditional musical styles, finding common ground among their cultural and geographical differences. Calling on inspirations from Sufi, Christian and Jewish mysticism, Balke imagines a melding of European and Middle Eastern cultures free from the stifling flames of the Inquisition.

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Jon Balke – Warp (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jon Balke - Warp (2016) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jon Balke – Warp (2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 52:21 minutes | 882 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

Warp situates the solo piano of Norway’s Jon Balke within a subtle architecture of composed soundscapes, in fluctuating dimensions of space. And what begins as gently exploratory solo piano gradually acquires an almost hallucinatory aspect. Balke’s solo piano, the sound images and the additional field recordings were integrated in the mix of the album at RSI Studio Lugano in September 2015. Warp was produced by Jon Balke and Manfred Eicher.
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Jon Balke – Siwan – Nahnou Houm (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jon Balke - Siwan - Nahnou Houm (2017) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jon Balke – Siwan – Nahnou Houm (2017)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 47:33 minutes | 861 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

In 2009, Jon Balke, who’s been a resident at the ECM label for several years, embarks on the Siwan adventure, an international collective created in order to make the boundaries between world music, classical music and jazz sway. Moroccan singer Amina Alaoui and American trumpet player Jon Hassell are then among its copilots… Eightyears later, the Norwegian pianist revives this adventure by placing his exceptional instrumental forces at the service of a new voice, the one of Algerian singer Mona Boutchebak. With Siwan – Nahnou Houm, Balke and his musicians highlight the links between Arab music, Andalusian classical music and European baroque music that have ignited the sextagenarian Norwegian’s imagination when he started this project. To bring these sound scenes even closer, he set about putting into music Al Andalus’ poetry, reflecting an era of coexistence between the three great monotheistic religions. The strength as well as the singularity of Siwan is to never present itself as a historic project but on the contrary as a really contemporary swerve, delivered by an association of strong-minded musicians, putting their talents at the service of a singer deeply rooted in Arab traditional music.
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Jon Balke – Discourses (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jon Balke - Discourses (2020) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jon Balke – Discourses (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 43:42 minutes | 725 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

Having worked with ECM Records over several decades, Jon Balke is the epitome of the versatile musician. For example, in 2009, the Norweigan pianist, who is now 65 years old, embarked on a new adventure with his album Siwan, an international collective that blurred the boundaries between world music, classical music and jazz. In his latest release, Discourses, Balke returns to his solo work mixing soundscapes made of compositions, improvisations and what we now call “sound design”. He continues the methodology employed on Warp, the deeply introspective album he released in 2016, and develops it further. As is often the case with his piano music the songs are layered with disparate textures that are often acoustic but are sometimes electronic. The flowing melodies are interrupted at times with subtle dissonances and even unexpected sounds. The concept for this 2020 vintage originates from one of Balke’s very own ideas. The Norweigan based his work on various observations about language, viewing the notions of discourse and dialogue as fading concepts in light of the surge of rhetoric characterised by confrontation and conflict. “In this work I had the framework of language with me from the very beginning”, he says. “As the political climate hardened in 2019 with more and more polarized speech, the lack of dialogue pointed me towards the terms that constitute the titles for the tracks”. That being said, you don’t need this discourse in mind to enjoy this vast array of piano figurations which are delightful as they are. – Marc Zisman
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Jon Balke – Siwan – Hafla (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Jon Balke - Siwan - Hafla (2022) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz] Download

Jon Balke – Siwan – Hafla (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 45:27 minutes | 806 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © ECM

Siwan, the transcultural, trans-idiomatic musical collective led by Norwegian keyboardist/composer Jon Balke, continues along its special path, with new music inspired by the creative spirit of Al-Andalus. The ensemble weaves lines of communication between musicians from multiple traditions and locations. Among the texts set by Balke on Siwan’s third album and persuasively sung by Algerian vocalist Mona Boutchebak are verses by Ummayad princess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi (1010-1091) and contemporaries including Ibn Zaydun (1003-1071) and Ibn Sara As-Santarini (1043-1123). Hafla was recorded in May and June 2021 at Village Recording Studios, in Copenhagen.
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