Albanian singer Elina Duni was born into a highly artistic family in Tirana in 1981 and first sang on stage at the age of five. In 1992 after the fall of the communist regime, she and her mother settled in Geneva. Soon after, she started classical piano lessons and discovered jazz, before going on to study singing and composition in the jazz department at the Hochschule der Künste Bern.

During this time she also developed the Elina Duni Quartet to explore her musical roots, a combination of Balkan folk songs and jazz. The quartet released its ECM debut, Matanë Malit (Beyond the Mountain), a musical homage to Albania, in 2012.

In 2015 her quartet released its second album for ECM, Dallëndyshe (The Swallow). Duni contrasted this with her first quartet recording thus: it has, she said, “a different groove, a different momentum. It’s become more rhythmic. Sometimes it’s almost a trance-like propulsion.”  The album received great critical acclaim: “a sheer delight,” in the words of UK Vibe’s Tim Stenhouse.

Duni has said of her work with the quartet: “We focus all the intensity that the poetry needs. We have tried to convey its essence through our musical interpretation. To me, all improvised music is a jazz state of mind. We feel no obligation to play a song the same way twice.”

Her latest album Partir released in 2018 on ECM Records features Elina Duni as a soloist, accompanying herself on piano, acoustic guitar and percussion, marking her most ambitious and intimate work to date.