Magnetic Music
With no formal education, Jon Balke started his compositional development by writing for smaller jazzgroups. After an initial invitation to score one of his tunes for Oslo 13, then a group of aspiring young semi-professionals like Nils Petter Molvær, Audun Kleive, Torbjørn Sunde, Vidar Johansen and others, Balke started composing for a range of different musical situations like dance performances, theatre, chamber groups and more. This led to the creation of Magnetic North Orchestra (MNO).
MNO had its debut at the Vossajazz festival in Norway in 1992.
The idea was to combine a large percussion group, a string-quartet and a jazz sextet, to explore the palette of sound and possibilities that this instrumentation could give
From this starting point of 14 musicians , the orchestra has developed into a kind of "umbrella" concept that includes a nucleus of 8 musicians that cooperates with larger groups on special projects, and splits up in smaller segments for special purposes. It has also branched into a percussion research called Batagraf, a work shown in the album "Statements" on ECM.
The trilogy "Further" (ECM records 1992), "Solarized" (Emarcy) and "Kyanos" (ECM) cover MNO´s developments over 10 years of touring and performing around the world.
"Diverted travels" (2004) marks the start of a new direction for the group.
The orchestra has toured with different line-ups, and has enjoyed the collaboration with the outstanding percussion players like Marilyn Mazur and Rubem Dantas, as well as fine string players like the Cikada string quartet and Trondhjemssolistene
Important is also the multi-media stage productions "SPINN" with dancer Isnel da Silveira and "EXPLO 97" a concert including dancers Giorgio Rossi and Flavia Marini, plus 30 amateur dancers from Molde, Norway.
MNO is today a tree with many branches, including the Batagraf and SIWAN projects that although resting on the traditions of jazz, north– and west–african, and contemporary classical music define their own space in world music.The surviving concept is based on avoiding application of elements of traditional forms, and rather developing a new kind of pulsating group music by learning from the inner energy that these traditional forms posess.