Elina Duni: A Time to Remember

Someone once described Leonard Cohen's music as "uplifting in a peculiarly depressing way." The music of singer Elina Duni and guitarist Rob Luft is not depressing, though it certainly is uplifting. It is, however, full of tristesse, of sadness for things that are lost, be they people or places. This feeling goes deeper than mere nostalgia.

Listening to A Time To Remember and its predecessors, Duni and Luft's Lost Ships (ECM, 2020) and Duni's Partir (ECM, 2018), is at times rather like watching the final parting of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman's characters in Casablanca with a headful of mescalin. It is a heartbreaking experience, but it is so charged, and the artists' performances so immaculate, that the desire to experience it again is strong. Next time, however, one will, as it were, be on guard. Duni and Luft spoke about this aspect of their music, and its impact on audiences, in an interview they gave to AAJ in 2020.

Duni is of Albanian-Swiss heritage, and Luft is British, and they share an internationalist outlook and an empathy with victims of nationalism and authoritarianism, plagues that have viciously impacted on Europe and the Middle East since the turn of the millennium. Exile, loss and separation are recurring themes in the duo's songwriting. Like the earlier albums, A Time To Remember is a quietly powerful album (the YouTube clip below is indicative). It is performed by the same quartet as on Lost Ships—Duni on vocals, Luft on guitars, Matthieu Michel on flugelhorn and Fred Thomas on piano and drums. The material, once again, is a mixture of traditional Balkan songs and Duni and Luft originals. There are also three covers, of Charlie Haden and Abbey Lincoln's "First Song," Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns" and Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal's "I'll Be Seeing You." The twelve songs are sung in Balkan languages, French and English and fortunately, for these are lyrics which merit comprehension, the liner booklet gives English translations of them all.

It would be unfair to pick out any particular tracks for special praise. They are all marvellous. But mention has to be made of "Send In The Clowns." It is as affecting as the version of Charles Azvanour's "Hier Encore" which closed Lost Ships and which, Duni and Luft relate in the aforementioned interview, when they use it as an encore in Francophone countries, invariably has some people leaving the auditorium weeping. Be prepared.