Eliana Burki brought the alphorn into the 21st century … at age 39: Video, Photos

Eliana Burki layers harmonies on top of each other using a loop device. She elicits bluesy and scratchy tones from her alphorn as if it were a jazz trombone. This performance made the then 24-year-old famous throughout Switzerland.

With her way of playing the alphorn and her compositions, Eliane Burki quickly became a kind of musical ambassador: in 1999, when she was 16, she represented Switzerland at a world congress in Paris. In 2002 she brought Swissness to the Expo. Thanks to Eliana, Switzerland was able to present itself as fresh and modern, but anchored in tradition.

Critically eyed by the music scene

A certain part of the music world didn’t take this approach seriously: there was too much show for the jazz musicians, too much commercialization, too little personal style. Criticism came from folk music because they deliberately did not play in traditional costume and threw the usual rules of alphorn playing overboard. But that was her merit.

Eliana Burki was known as someone who did her thing. In a male-dominated scene, she didn’t allow herself to be deterred by being sexualized and underestimated. “Of course she also played with the image of the blonde girl with the alphorn and dealt with stupid sayings with confidence,” says band colleague Adriano Regazzin.