Vocalist Elina Duni and Guitarist Rob Luft Continue Their Musical Journey

“Reaching for the Moon” is their duo recording that follows up their previous ECM quartet albums, 2020’s.

Reaching for the Moon is Elina Duni’s sixth ECM recording, and her third with Rob Luft. The Swiss-Albanian singer and the UK guitarist have been developing their musical project since 2017, when they first met at a Montreux Jazz Festival workshop. They share interests in a very broad span of music, as reflected in their quartet albums Lost Ships (2020) and A Time To Remember (2023). The new album, featuring just the core voice/guitar duo, is their most intimate to date, and in its quiet way as adventurous and far-reaching as its predecessors. Its hushed atmospheres often feel nocturnal, and the song texts of the duo’s originals and the pieces they have chosen to interpret frequently allude to aspects of the night. The arc of the program opens with Irving Berlin’s “Reaching for the Moon” and concludes with Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman”, where Margo Guryan’s lyric begins, “Lonely in the night she wanders…”

Rob Luft was born in South London in 1993. He began playing with Britain’s National Youth Jazz Orchestra at 15, before going on to study at the Royal Academy of Music. On graduating in 2016 he received the academy’s Kenny Wheeler Jazz Prize, and has since been the winner of a number of awards, most recently including the UK Parliamentary Jazz Awards 2025, where he was voted Instrumentalist of the Year.

In addition to Lost Ships and A Time To Remember with Elina Duni, Rob Luft has also appeared on ECM with John Surman’s quartet on the album Words Unspoken.