Jazz/Ethno
ALBANIA
Elina Spiro Duni (born May 1981, Tirane, Albania) is a Swiss-Albanian jazz singer.
Elina made her first steps on stage at the age of five. Born to an artistic family (her mother and grandfather were writers, her other grandfather was a singer, whereas her father was an actor and theatre director), she was exposed early to different types of art. When living in communist Albania, the only opportunity for her was to sing in the "palace of pioneer" (Albanian: Pallati i Pioniereve). In 1992 she settled in Geneva, Switzerland along with her mother.
Between 2004 and 2008 she studied singing and composition at the Hochschule der Kunste in Bern, in the jazz department. During this time she develops the Elina Duni Quartet with Colin Vallon on piano, Patrice Moret on double bass and Norbert Pfammatter on drums, which represents a return to her musical sources, a combination of Balkans folk songs and jazz.
In 2008 the CD Baresha, the first album of the Elina Duni Quartet, was released on Meta Records. This first musical departure with her quartet received marvelous acclaims from the German and Swiss press and is followed by European tours and festivals.
In February 2010 the second album of the Quartet Lume, Lume (World, World) was released on Meta Records.
Elina Duni Quartet mesmerizes with a unique amalgam of Eastern European tradition transposed to a modern Jazz key, a group sensibility that goes far beyond singer and typical piano trio backup. The music is tender, quietly sad, meditatively intimate and passionate in turn and Elina is a vocal stylist that deserves to be heard. This is lovely music, lovingly rendered. She shows that the singer and band formula need not rely on stale, endless reiterations of the past but can strike out on new roads that synthesize different styles and world sounds. Excellent.
ALBUMS:
2011 - Lume,Lume
Kenga e Qamiles / trad. Albania
Ki zandana me kamerav / trad. Romani
Lume Lume / trad. Roumania
Do marr ciften / trad. Albania
Kur me del n’sokak / trad. Kosovo
Ha bu ander sevdaluk, / Aytekin G. Atas
Dhen mboro Manoula / trad. Greece
Nenocke / trad. Albania
Hapi syte e zes / trad. Albania
S’paske pas nje pike meshire / trad. Albania,
I. Myzyri
Kaval Sviri / trad. Bulgaria
