Rob Luft and Elina Duni have been making music together for about nine years, resulting in a near-perfect harmonic rapport. Their choice of numbers is truly universal – from Kosovo through Albania, France, and Switzerland to Tin Pan Alley, the American outlands and Hollywood, with the lullaby from Rosemary’s Baby, written by influential Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda. This is contemporary jazz at its finest: consistently creating and recreating, recognising sources, but transcending musical and geographical boundaries.

This performance was part of an extensive European tour promoting their latest album – they hurried down to Hastings between Germany and Poland, and it’s a tribute to this club that they chose to break their journey to come here. It’s a great album, but nothing compares to the magic produced by the live show.

Luft’s versatility has few limits. As a band member he has enhanced such diverse outfits as those of John Surman, Avishai Cohen, and Corrie Dick, and he has also recorded a work of his own with the BBC Concert Orchestra. Of nine released albums, this is the second showcasing the duo. He has a fine, fluid fretboard technique unusually sensitive to dynamics. On a Gibson electric, he makes the most of his effects pedals in a process with which he seems almost casually at ease, so that the audience hardly notices it going on. His adroit changes in volume and style, though, always leave space for Duni’s vocal command and dexterity.

Her voice is stunning: warm without being cloying, effortlessly on pitch, an authentic jazz vocal. She knows how to decorate and scat with discernment, never allowing the descent into over-showy bathos that vocal improvisation occasionally induces. Clearly, she is also an accomplished linguist: she moved easily between English, Italian, her native Albanian and her adopted French, plus Kosovan, Russian, and Iranian.

While some of the English numbers – Irving Berlin’s Reaching for the Moon for instance – elicited a definite middle-eastern modal feeling, I’ll Be Seeing You (from their 2023 album) while remaining faithful to the original, is beautifully unlike any other version you’ll ever hear, Luft providing a stylishly understated but perfect solo break. A tribute to the groundbreaking jazz of the American Beat era was Mal Waldron’s heartrending Left Alone. Gainsbourg’s Couleur Café was also a surprise, airily elegant and given a samba treatment. Local, nationally-acclaimed reedman Jason Yarde joined spontaneously into the final number, guesting on soprano.

This exceptional evening was dedicated to Julian Norridge, journalist and TV producer, who, in his retirement, among other local musical activities, had a long-running association with Jazz Hastings, but died in March this year.

Rob Luft and Elina Duni played at Jazz Hastings, The Stade, on 5 May.

VICTORIA KINGHAM

Guitarist Rob Luft has been a regular visitor to Jazz Hastings, having appeared here with his own band and with other musicians celebrated for their originality: Byron Wallen, Corrie Dick, Dave O’Higgins. Luft is in constant demand: his guitar technique is constantly inventive, versatile and original, and he was rightly named ‘Instrumentalist of the Year’ in the Parliamentary Jazz Awards for 2025.

In 2017, his path crossed with that of the singer Elina Duni at the Montreux Jazz Festival, marking the inception of a unique project. They have since toured the world, releasing two critically acclaimed albums on ECM Records in a quartet formation with Fred Thomas (drums) and trumpeter Matthieu Michel. For those of you familiar with the ‘ECM sound’, expect a characteristic dreamy ambience, open chords, judicious reverb and a display of excellent musicianship. For this session, they’ll be promoting their new 2026 duo album, Reaching for the Moon, which has already attracted a number of very favourable previews. This performance here is one of only three in the UK; the tour runs through Europe from Italy through Austria and Duni’s adopted country, Switzerland, to Barcelona.

A stripped-back duo effort, the album revisits the essence of their initial meeting. Duni’s voice blends beautifully with Luft’s guitar lines – her singing is intense and intelligent, and her voice softly compelling. Several albums have been released under her own name, as a singer-songwriter with her own quartet. She has also a long-held interest in the folk music of Albania (where she was born) and there is one beautiful solo album, Partir, where she accompanies herself to folk songs that are effortlessly rendered in nine different languages. Don’t miss this performance – it’ll be something very special.

Elina Duni (vocals) and Rob Luft (guitar) Tuesday 5 May, EHSAA, The Stade, Hastings: 8.30 pm.