Julia Gjertsen

Julia Gjertsen is a composer, pianist, and producer based in Oslo. Her music moves between ambient and modern classical, centered on the piano, often with electronics alongside it. She spent her formative years in Northern Norway, where the light disappears for months in winter and the summer sun never sets, and some of that rhythm ended up in the music: the space and the stillness. Much of her music starts with things words can't quite reach: memories, places, moments from nature, the way she sees the world. The music is where those things get to exist on their own. She often builds her pieces in layers, sounds and textures placed on top of each other. Her debut EP, Slow Motion Stories (2012), grew out of a question: what happens when you slow down in a world that won't? Her first full length album, Fragile (2019), went deeper into that territory with intimate piano and quiet synths. On Formations (2022), she brought in flute and electronics and let the sound open up. The third album Shadow Light (2024) strips much of that back: the piano takes the lead, more melody and less layering. She has also collaborated with composers and musicians including Nico Rosenberg (Distant Fields, 2020; Paisajes Imaginarios, 2022; El miedo no es una opción, 2026), Juha Mäki-Patola (Dive, 2023), and Gustav Davidsson (Wandering Mind, Drifting Weather, 2025), projects where her sound meets someone else's vision. The most recent of these, “El miedo no es una opción”, arrives in September 2026.