I’ve been a big fan of Elina Duni since her first ECM album Matanë Malit (Beyond the Mountain) in her long-standing quartet with Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Norbert Pfammatter — as well as its follow-up Dallëndyshe (The Swallow). I must admit that I tend to like those albums with their jazz approach a bit more than her subsequent releases, including her previous two outings with guitarist Rob Luft Lost Ships (2020) and A Time To Remember (2023), but I always find her voice enchanting and her interpretations of standards, jazz, art song, Balkan folk, lullabies … whatever … never less than entrancing. That also holds true for this latest ECM offering by Duni and Luft, Reaching for the Moon.
The album’s title sets the mood, and this duo’s cover of the Irving Berlin standard “Reaching For The Moon” that opens the album is deliciously tender and melancholy. It’s one of a trio of film-connected tunes, the others coming in a medley that creatively pairs “Yumeji’s Theme” by Shigeru Umebayashi (which first appeared in the film Yumeji, as well as later being used by Wong Kar Wai for In The Mood for Love) with the somewhat creepy lullaby “Sleep Safe and Warm” from Rosemary’s Baby. Duni sings wordless vocals in both.
My absolute favorite song here, one that harkens back to those earlier Balkan themed albums, is the upbeat traditional Albanian piece from Kosovo “Ani More Nuse,” on which she adds subtle rhythm from a frame drum to Luft’s filigreed guitar accompaniment. “Zambaku i Prizrenit” is another lovely Balkan song, close in spirit to sevdah, with lots of wordless singing from Duni and a lovely brief solo from Luft.
Duni is amazingly multi-lingual. In addition to the English and Albanian songs already mentioned, there’s the haunting “Leili Lullaby” in Persian (on which she also plays frame drum), the moody “Cammina Cammina” by Italian singer-songwriter Pino Daniele, and in French Gabriel Fauré’s art song “Les Berceaux.” Both of those somber tracks take us to the sea, the former taking us to a harbor where an old man awaits death under the moonlight, and the latter whose lyrics tell of women rocking cradles by the quayside as they wait for men to return from the sea. The Duni-Luft original “Magnolia” — one of three here — also is in French. Their “Foolish Flame” is in English.
The album wraps appropriately with Ornette Coleman’s melancholy “Lonely Woman,” with its sad lyrics by Margo Guryan. (The song with lyrics has not been recorded as many times as Coleman’s instrumental original, but was notably covered by another very multi-lingual singer, Finland’s Carola Standertskjöld.) Duni’s arrangement moves the song from its downcast opening (“Lonely in the night she wanders…”) to an air of defiance and strength in the coda with wordless vocals and more of that frame drum.
Duni and Luft, with EMI producer extraordinaire Manfred Eicher, have given us another ideal album for late night contemplation and musing. From folk to jazz to film music to art song, Duni’s voice is a wonderful instrument, perfectly presented on Reaching for the Moon.
(ECM, 2026)
