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Rob Luft: Dahab Days
by Geno Thackara
The beauty of holiday snapshots is that they can capture the good times (interesting places, pleasant sights) without necessarily reminding you of the possible downsides (weather issues, travel hassles, deadly pandemic, etc). Rob Luft's stay in Egypt might not have been a true vacation, considering that it came during a rampant period of Covid-19. Still, if his memories of the time included any lingering worry or uncertainty because of the circumstances, Dahab Days shows few discernible hints of it. He ...
read moreRob Luft: Dahab Days
by Chris May
In an interview with AAJ in 2020, Rob Luft was asked to name six all-time favourite albums. Number one on his list was Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset's Dream Logic (ECM, 2012), a duo project with electronicist Jan Bang. Said Luft: “It's an album that really sounds like dreams, it's wonderful how it floats for forty-five, fifty minutes and teleports you to another place. The production is impeccable and the sound is so glistening." Luft could have been ...
read moreElina Duni: A Time to Remember
by Chris May
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), ...
read moreElina Duni / Rob Luft: Lost Ships
by Chris May
Released just in time to make the Best Albums of 2020 lists, the Albanian-Swiss singer Elina Duni and the British guitarist Rob Luft's Lost Ships is an exquisitely beautiful, emotionally complex, words and music masterpiece from two of the most distinctive talents on the European scene. Passionate and grave, serene and desolate, it is a kind of sequel to Duni's acclaimed 2018 ECM debut, Partir. Partir explored the humanitarian crisis which was then (as now) sweeping across Europe ...
read moreElina Duni & Rob Luft: Songs Of Love And Exile
by Chris May
The British guitarist Rob Luft has already released one of the great albums of 2020 with Life Is The Dancer (Edition), which came out back in the spring. Now Luft notches up another 2020 highlight with the collaborative Lost Ships (ECM), jointly conceived and co-led with the Albanian-Swiss singer Elina Duni. By turns passionate and grave, serene and desolate, the album is a full spectrum words-and-music landmark release from two of the most distinctive talents on the European scene.
read moreRob Luft: Life Is The Dancer
by Chris May
British guitarist Rob Luft's debut album, Riser (Edition, 2017), was greeted with huge acclaim. Some observers likened his arrival to the emergence of Wes Montgomery or Pat Metheny. The music world is used to hyperbole, but for once the praise is justified. For anyone yet to hear Luft, a useful yardstick is the pianist Bill Evans: Luft conjures up degrees of seraphic beauty akin to those created by Evans during his purple period with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul ...
read moreDave O'Higgins & Rob Luft: Plays Monk & Trane
by Chris May
Hearing the young British guitarist Rob Luft for the first time on his debut album, Riser (Edition, 2017), was rather like hearing American guitarist Johnny Smith for the first time on Moonlight In Vermont (Roost, 1956). You knew you were listening to something special. And while much separates the players' styles, much unites them, too: Smith's signature was long-form chorded passages, Luft's is effervescent single-note runs, but both approaches are intensely melodic and are enabled by virtuosic techniques, lightly worn. ...
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