Taking its name, perhaps, from the award-winning 2003 French film of the same name - a story about a family of wanderers - Les Égarés ('Strayed') sees longtime collaborators, Malian kora maestro Ballake Sissoko and Victoire de la Musique-winning French cellist Vincent Segal expanding their jazz horizons with this new quartet featuring another formidable duo, French accordionist Vincent Peirani and French saxophonist Emile Parisien. Each pair has forged their own award-winning path in ways deft and delicate, bold and boundary-crossing; together, their combined curiosity and openness pays dividends.

Highlights abound across the album's 10 tracks: ‘Banja’ begins with a sax line that meanders, questing and golden, through quivering space until found by slow-bowed strings and keening accordion, tripping prettily, changing tempo as each instrumentalist listens to the other. ‘Ta Nyé’ is a glorious, forward-going melange marked by cascading kora notes and propulsive saxophone; ‘Les Chanson des Égarés’ reinvents the form, with kora making way for bowed cello and cello played pizzicato before Parisien weighs in on sax and Peirani's accordion, an instrument intrinsic to the chanson form, recalls the song's title.

Too soothing to be avant-garde, too free to be chamber (though it is a bit of both), Les Égarés could be described as jazz as communication, exploration and awareness.