Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir - Some Other Time 60 Years of Monica Zetterlund & Bill Evans (2025)

Anna Gréta goes gentle…into her second album on ACT, “Star of Spring”. The Reykjavik-born pianist, singer and a songwriter, who has lived in Stockholm since 2014, has her own refreshing way of approaching the art of quiet, artful, deeply personal songs, often drawing inspiration from the beauty and power of Iceland’s natural landscape. Her 2021 ACT debut "Nightjar in the Northern Sky" was named after a bird, and this follow-up album lands gracefully on a flower, the “glory of the snow”, also known as the "star of spring", which symbolises the ending of winter and the arrival of spring. But look closer, and there are always other levels of meaning. Her "Nightjar”, the rare bird she once saw in front of the northern sky, was a metaphor for the search for the things which are special and essential. In fact, almost all of Anna Gréta's lyrics have more than one significance, and her storytelling has now taken a leap forward on "Star Of Spring". She says of the little flower on the title track: "I wasn't just inspired by the way it takes over the meadows in spring and turns them from green to blue, but also by the fact that it blooms because it is compelled to so. It cannot do anything else."

Anna Gréta's starting point to creating music was and is the piano. She first studied classical music, then switched to jazz. She only started singing later, when she was writing the songs for Nightjar and wanted to express herself in words. Anna Gréta's debut as a singer, pianist and songwriter earned her international acclaim: Downbeat Magazine called it „an album with the metamophoric diversity of a year’s seasons and a voice like the ever-changing colours of the Northern lights“, France Musique “a remarkably immersive experience” and Jazzwise simply “starkly beautiful”.
On "Star Of Spring" Anna Gréta has further developed her individual style. Her vocal lines can resemble piano motifs, often doubling them and resonating with an impressively quiet vibrato, sometimes quirkily reminiscent of Björk, at other times with the brooding ease of Norah Jones. The album also bears a very distinctive production style. For each of the songs, Anna Gréta has created her own little world of choirs, rhythmic textures and various smartly used keyboard instruments. The album ranges from the hymnal and elegiac - in "She Moves" or in the title track - to the playful and cheerful "Space Time" or the extremely pared-down melancholic ballad "Denouement". And even if the general mood of the music exudes above all warmth and comfort, Anna Gréta also deals with serious topics, such as the forced birth control of women in Greenland during the 60s and 70s in the song "The Body Remembers".

TRACKLIST

1. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Come Rain or Come Shine
2. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Jag Vet en Dejlig Rosa
3. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Once Upon a Summertime
4. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Lucky to Be Me
5. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Vindarna Sucka Uti Skogarna
6. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - It Could Happen to You
7. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Some Other Time
8. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Om Natten
9. Anna Gréta Sigurðardóttir, Sigurður Flosason, Johan Tengholm - Nú Vil Ég Enn Н Nafni Þínu