We talk to Anna Högberg - musician, composer and medical nurse based in Sweden

How would you describe what you do and your music?
I create different musical meeting points and gather people to do things together. Often, I have ideas that I cannot resist doing - ideas that we build together with improvisation.

It’s hard to describe in English, but improvised music is the environment I really feel safe in, because whatever can happen. It starts with an idea: I say this is what I’m thinking about, how can we create it together? It’s not about saying I want you to play exactly like this; it's about the idea itself.

What were your earliest experiences of music, and what led you to the saxophone and improvised music?
I’ve always been fascinated by sounds - like sounds that stand out from ordinary life or even of ordinary life itself.

When I was a kid, we had a piano at home, but I didn't have the opportunity to learn it. I was born in the Stockholm archipelago, and there weren’t any teachers around. But I enjoyed trying out different sounds.  

Then one morning when I was about nine, I saw a woman playing the saxophone on TV. That sound and the way she looked and everything about it made me think, wow, I want to do that thing.

Then we moved to the north of Sweden. It was a big change and my mum wanted to give me something in return. So we rented a saxophone, and I started lessons with a really inspiring teacher.

It was just joyful to play together. He would play the piano, and I would play the saxophone, and that’s where the improvisation started. The freedom to feel and play however I wanted. He was very accepting and encouraging of me.

And then I started to listen to jazz records and to play along - to try to fit in with different music that I listened to.

Where did you go from there? What did it lead to when you were making decisions about what to do after school?
I was at a school that specialised in maths and physics, so there wasn’t much organised music-making. In my last year, I joined a big band, and spent more and more time playing the saxophone at home.

I knew I wanted to play more, so I applied to a folkhögskola - a kind of pre-university school in the countryside. There are lots of them in Sweden, and many include creative subjects. I applied to a programme in the north of Sweden with lessons in theory and ensemble. And because we were out in the countryside, there was nothing else to do but play.

I found other sound nerds who liked improvised music, and we played together and listened to music all the time. It was an extremely inspiring environment to just dig into music. 

There were two musicians I would regularly meet. We would go into a room, turn out the lights and just focus on the sounds we were creating. This was my starting point in free improvised music. I wasn’t trying to fit in with the sound worlds that I heard on records - this was something else entirely. 

We were just trying to play together, and with each other, and against each other. We were exploring possibilities with sounds and harmonies, working with contrasts and playing ugly, nicely and everything in between.

How did this interest in free jazz/free improvisation influence your development and creative process as a musician?
It created a kind of self-esteem, a safety, and confidence. It was very natural for me, so I was never afraid of improvising. That was something I could take with me. 

After a year in Norway doing other things, I came back to Folkhögskola a second time, in Skåne, in the south of Sweden. This time I was more confident about what I wanted to do. 

I found other people who wanted to play this kind of music, free jazz and free improvised music. There were no hierarchies, just full immersion. It was very freeing.

After that, I was accepted to the Royal Academy of Music. I still had a strong desire to make a certain kind of music, but I was open to learning traditional jazz as well.

 Although I gained good experience, it wasn’t the best environment for me. I left after 18 months because I'd started to play in different groups, and that was what I wanted to focus on.

Did you have any mentors or role models during this period who particularly inspired you or supported you on this path?
During my time at the Royal Academy of Music, I met Lisa Ullén, a piano player living in Stockholm. We started to play together. She's 20 years older than me, so she had a lot of knowledge and experience, and became a role model and my best friend. That was one of the most important meetings of my life, because we've done so much together since.

And then, I met my saxophone brother and friend, Mats Gustafsson. He has been a huge inspiration - hearing him play, and listening to all the possibilities that you can create made me a stronger player. I realised that I can play it my own way and that's okay. For me, that's the best way - just make your own thing. Because otherwise, why do we do music?

For me, music is something that I want to be joyful, and that’s part of why I became a nurse - so music didn’t just become about earning money. I have to earn an income to pay for my apartment and food for the kids, so doing something completely different is better for me. It means I can focus on the musical projects that I really want to do and that I love.

How do you hold these two very different parts of your life in balance?
This is something that absolutely makes my life richer. When the pandemic arrived, all the gigs disappeared, and suddenly I had no income at all. I decided to study and went to nursing school for three years. My goal was to find a job where I could work maybe 50-60% and play the rest of the time. Now I work Monday to Wednesday at the hospital, and the rest of the time I can make music. This suits me very well.

When I'm at my work as a nurse, I feel, oh, it would be so nice to practice some saxophone next week. And when I'm playing saxophone or out on tour, I feel, maybe I should learn something more about blood cells. The contrast makes me even more interested in the other subject - I like contrasts, not only in music, but in life.

Before, I worked full-time with music, and life was exhausting. There's so much administrative work and planning, holding a hundred thoughts in your head, and at the same time trying to be creative. For me, that was destructive. So this is a more sustainable way to live, and I can focus on fewer projects, but projects that really mean a lot.

What did your early career and creative collaborations look like, and what did you learn?
I learned so much from playing with Fire! Orchestra and Mats Gustafsson's different projects, and I still do every time I'm in these constellations and bands. When I joined Fire! Orchestra, I met so many people I'd been listening to and looked up to. This gave me a renewed confidence - playing together with them, as myself, and being accepted.

I also started some of my own projects. I had a free jazz quartet and a trio that played very hard free jazz, and then I started my own sextet. It just went on. It was a hard job, but a very free way of living, more a lifestyle than a job. Travelling around, making music, doing different things, improvising with strangers. Someone would write to me from another country, come here and play with this and this, and I would go and meet new friends. They were very exciting times, but also exhausting.

I learnt that acceptance and confidence are needed to improvise with people that you’ve just met. An acceptance that this is what it is right now. It can be very difficult, and it can also be very joyful. All these emotions and all these sounds are okay.  You really need to be on your toes and focus - to just be in the moment, and not think about the bills you have to pay, or what you’re doing tomorrow.

What advice would you give a young person starting out as an artist in creative music?
Don't care so much about what other people think. And ask the people you really look up to for help, or to play together. That can be tricky - even in my forties, I’ve thought, oh, can I really contact this person to ask them to play with me? I have to tell myself, yes, dare to ask. 

It's always good to reach out to people that you want to collaborate with, and they are also ordinary human beings, just like us (and probably don’t bite!).

Have there been any particular challenges for you as a female artist and composer? Is there anything you think still needs to change?
It's always been difficult. When I grew up, there weren’t many women playing. There have always been more boys and men. And there wasn’t always such a nice attitude towards me being a female instrumentalist. I had to learn the hard way to say to myself, f**k them, I'm doing my own thing.

I don't know what it looks like at the Royal Academy of Music these days, but when I was there, there weren’t many women. So it could feel pretty lonely. And I did feel the pressure that I had to be extremely good to be accepted.

Now I think it's a better environment. In Stockholm, I see women and men programming and  organising music events, and the gender balance with musicians is also better than before. I can see the difference internationally too at festivals. It’s more and more equal and I’m happy to see that. 

I think there’s still more to do to encourage girls and young women to start to play and to encourage them to go on to music schools.

Who are the women or non-binary artists whose work excites you most right now?
One saxophone player I've always admired – and I've also played with her a bit – is Christine Abdelnour. She lives in France, and she's incredibly brilliant. I really love her saxophone playing. She's also a role model in doing your own thing, doing whatever you want with the saxophone.

How would you describe the free improvised music scene in Europe, and what is it like to be part of that as an artist?
I felt like I was more part of it before - I’m still in it but in a different way. It’s always interesting and I want to listen to more of what’s going on right now but it’s not always easy to find the time. Me and some friends have started to meet once in a while to listen to music. We blindfold each other, and share new music we’ve been listening to and then discuss it. That’s been really inspiring and helps me keep up.

While the scene is strong and there’s lots of interesting music, there’s less and less money in it, so it’s not so easy to get new projects off the ground. Here in Sweden, you’re not guaranteed to get any support for tours or for your work as an artist. But it’s when things are tough that people most need music. 

What's next for you -  musically and in life more broadly?
In September 2025 I released an album [Ensamseglaren] with my band Anna Högberg Attack, expanding into a 12-piece ensemble playing my music, and it's been spreading all over the world and getting some amazing reviews.

No one can book us because the ensemble is too big, and we don't have any government support or anything. But many people got in touch to ask about other projects.

It gave me an opportunity to start some new things. First, a collaboration with a drummer (Anton Jonsson) and bass player (Gus Loxbo) who are also members of the larger version of Anna Högberg Attack, but doing something completely different and exploring some new ideas. We will play at Brda Contemporary Music Festival in Slovenia this autumn.

And I’m also starting a collaboration with two Norwegians - Heida Mobeck, on tuba, and Anja Laudal playing keys- and Danish drummer Mads Forsby. We will meet in Stockholm for a small residency and play at John Chantler's festival Ten Years Alive. I'm looking forward to that very much, to begin new things, and we'll see what happens with it.

And I’ve got gigs coming up with Fire! Orchestra. It’s all ‘feel good’ things. I don't want to have lots of travel and expectations, so I feel very free and happy with my music right now.

Ensamseglaren (Lonely Sailor) has been widely acclaimed. Can you tell us about what making this record meant to you?
I wrote the music as a kind of processing of the death of my father. I had an enormous urge to play music and to do it with people I really loved. It turned out to be beautiful music, and I'm very proud of it. I also didn't put it on Spotify - it's only on Bandcamp and vinyl. Even so, it's spread in a weird way; people have listened to it and enjoyed it. People in grief have contacted me and told me the music gave them comfort; it strengthened them. This is something very beautiful, and it gives extra meaning to what you do as a musician.

It was a huge thing for me - putting this band together, this impossible project that I just felt I must do. I had this idea: I have to collect 12 of the best musicians and friends, contact them, bring them together and do this thing. So with some saved money, I did this because I had to, and it wouldn't have been possible without John Chantler, who helped at every step and put the record out on his great label Fönstret.

Once I knew exactly who would be part of it, I also knew how I would write the music. I wrote it particularly for them, but also together with them. That was a beautiful thing, to have these people and say, I want you and you and you to do this. I made a form, and I could decide who would do what within it, but everyone, of course, made their own thing and improvised, so it became something completely different. And that's exactly how it should be.

The work we do - as musicians and organisers and people who bring music into the world in different ways - is an important role in society. Sometimes it's difficult to see that -  oh, I'm just a musician, I'm doing this because I want to.

But music is so important, and can be this healing thing. In my work as a nurse, I meet patients struggling with different diseases, and we start to talk about music, and it can be something really important and joyful for them in their struggle. So I want to give that to musicians too -  an understanding that the work we do is so important, because it might not always feel that way.

Images: Tina Axelsson