Swiss Jazz Award 2025 goes to Elina Duni
This year's Swiss Jazz Award, presented as part of JazzAscona, goes to the singer and composer Elina Duni.
Elina Duni was born into a family of artists in Tirana in 1981 and began performing for Albanian radio and TV at the age of five. After the fall of the communist regime, she moved to Geneva with her mother, where she studied classical piano before turning to jazz. She perfected her training at the Bern University of the Arts, concentrating on composition and improvisation.
During these years, together with Colin Vallon (piano), Patrice Moret (double bass) and Norbert Pfammatter (drums), she founded the Elina Duni Quartet, a project that fuses jazz with the sounds of Balkan folklore. In 2012, Elina Duni recorded a collaboration with ECM Records.
Established in 2007, the Swiss Jazz Award is presented annually at JazzAscona (June 25 - July 5, 2025). Recent winners include Bruno Spoerri (2017), Franco Ambrosetti (2018), Othella Dallas (2019), Nolan Quinn (2022), Christoph Grab (2023) and the Swiss Jazz Orchestra (2024).
