You wouldn’t normally associate the tuba with words such as serene, fragile, understated or even flexible. In jazz, at least, pumping out spluttering bass grooves is the role that comes to mind. In Daniel Herskedal’s hands though, these kind of descriptions all apply. The Norwegian tuba player-composer first registered on the UK jazz radar in 2012 with a duo recording, Neck of the Woods, alongside compatriot and then rising-star saxophonist Marius Neset. Herskedal made his own mark two years later with a fine chamber ensemble debut, Slow Eastbound Train, and followed it with The Roc in 2017. New album Voyage has the same personnel, minus cello, as the latter and the aforementioned qualities are apparent in both his playing and arrangements. Not that Herskedal doesn’t groove and groove well, but when he does his tuba pulsates with an understated force, for example on opener ‘Batten Down the Hatches’, the tuba bubbling beneath a theme played by Trondheim Orchestra viola player Bergmund Waal Skaslien. There’s a notable contribution by the elegantly animated pianist Eyolf Dale too, another Edition artist who has an excellent larger chamber jazz ensemble of his own. Dale creates lyrical, rippling lines through tracks such as ‘Cut and Run’ and the folk song-ish ‘Mollie Hunt’s Seagulls’. The title-track partly reflects on a topical theme, that of the often anxious plight of the migrant, as do the ethereal ‘Rescue-At-Sea Operations’ and ‘The Mediterranean Passage in the Age of Refugees’, both of which feature guest contributor Maher Mahmoud on oud shining a light on Herskedel’s love for Middle-Eastern melodies. Closing ballad ‘The Lighthouse’ also draws from Semitic as well as Nordic folk song traditions. Its hymnal brass and Herskedal’s ethereal Arve Henriksen-type solo seem to echo the lonesome night-time journey of a refugee boat bound for a distant land and uncertain future. Global concerns cross with a global musical reach on Herskedal’s delicately exquisite and, perhaps, most improv-friendly recording to date.