Anja Garbarek

Despite her father being the legendary saxophonist Jan Garbarek, Anja Garbarek initially had no plans to pursue a career in music. Time spent traveling on tour with him during much of her youth led her to discover artists such as Kate Bush, Brian Eno, and Laurie Anderson through his record collection. A college performance in a musical caught the interest of a writer, who connected her with a contact at a record label that offered her a contract. Drawn to the open possibilities of musical expression rather than the constraints she associated with acting, she entered the studio with little more than a sense that extensive exploration lay ahead.

Her debut arrived as the fully Norwegian-language Velkommen Inn (Come On In) in 1992, serving mainly as an introduction. Four years of further refinement produced the follow-up Balloon Mood in 1996. Five additional years elapsed before Smiling and Waving, her strongest work to date, which included contributions from Robert Wyatt, Mark Hollis (Talk Talk), Steve Jansen (Japan), and former Cocteau Twins associate Mitsuo Tate. In line with material by several of her cited influences and collaborators, the album merged avant-garde pop with traces of trip-hop while integrating woodwinds and electronic beats to striking effect.