Runa Viggen takes us on a piano-led journey through chaos, control and catharsis
Norwegian pianist, composer and organist Runa Viggen returns with her sophomore album Open Plains, a record that refuses to sit still, float-boxed into any one genre.
Following her 2022 debut ambár, Viggen pushes further into a space where jazz, classical, fusion and progressive rock blur into something more fluid, more instinctive, more alive.
There are sensibilities of Tori Amos and Regina Spektor, where melody and emotion are left to stretch freely — translated here into purely instrumental form.
Recorded in Los Angeles with Larry Steen on bass and Chris Wabich on drums, Open Plains feels like a conversation between disciplined musicianship and total creative release.
There’s a clear sense of control here, but also a willingness to let things fracture at the edges – where structure gives way to improvisation, and intention gives way to feeling.
Viggen describes the album as a conceptual journey through healing, trauma and transformation, moving from ‘Amaranth’ (a symbol of immortality and resilience) through to final track ‘Rubicon’, a point-of-no-return moment that lands like both ending and arrival.
That arc gives the record emotional shape, even when the compositions themselves resist traditional form.
‘Ursa Minor’ opens the wider journey into something cosmic and searching, anchored by rhythmic interplay that feels navigational – like tracing constellations through sound.
On ‘Bury Me Standing’, piano and drums spiral around each other in a kind of shared consciousness: sometimes colliding, sometimes drifting apart, always listening.
Elsewhere, ‘Old Fields of War’ leans into tension and atmosphere, while ‘The Tears of My Mother’ strips things right back into something raw and exposed.
It’s one of the record’s most affecting moments – unadorned piano carrying all the weight.
“Rayan” snaps the energy back into focus, sharper and more defiant, before Rubicon closes everything out with a sense of inevitability. It doesn’t resolve so much as it releases – like stepping past a threshold you can’t un-cross.
At its core, Open Plains is about freedom – but not the easy kind. This is freedom earned through discipline, repetition, and sheer musical trust.
Viggen isn’t trying to fit into genre lanes; she’s building her own terrain entirely. At times it’s chaotic, at others meticulously composed, but it always feels intentional.
And in a landscape of increasingly polished, algorithm-shaped music, there’s something quietly radical about that. Listen below.
