Elina Duni / Rob Luft – Reaching for the Moon (CD)

Few contemporary jazz-influenced singers manage to sound so intensely like themselves while drawing on such a variety of genres, languages, and cultural backstories as the Albania-born vocalist Elina Duni," The Guardian has noted, and the new album, Reaching for the Moon, once again casts a wide net. It's Duni's third recording with Rob Luft, and where previous albums featured their co-led quartet, the core duo come to the fore here, in a program that begins with Irving Berlin's title song and ends with Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman." Along the way we hear Duni and Luft originals, traditional music from Kosovo, a lullaby penned by Mahsa Vahdat, a ballad from Pino Daniele, Gabriel Faure's art song "Les Berceaux," themes for film written by Shigeru Umebayashi and Krzysztof Komeda, and more. "Our duo, our project, is a musical journey," says Elina. "Different styles and different languages to bridge the gap between people.