Reykjavik-born pianist, singer and a songwriter, Anna Gréta, who has lived in Stockholm since 2014, has her own 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. 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 in the Northern Sky’ and wanted to express herself in words. Anna Gréta’s debut as a singer, pianist and songwriter earned her international acclaim with the likes of Downbeat Magazine, France Musique and Jazzwise. On ‘Star Oof 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’. “This album is more playful and experimental,” she says. “A lot of things were easier for me than on the first album. And while I was still completely focussed on my own world then, now I was even more conscious and aware of what was going on around me.” The result is music that is rooted in jazz, but at the same time goes far beyond it in a very subtle and deeply touching way.