Iona Zajac: International Showcase Fund (SXSW 2024)

Iona Zajac at SXSW 2024

There’s an understated beauty to the work of Iona Zajac. It resonates throughout her stunning debut EP, Find Her In The Grass.Formed of four delicate and captivating songs, the work here is pulled from the past few years of Zajac’s life, a long and careful process that saw her own poems grow into the songs we hear on the EP. “I learned how to play guitar. I found some old poems. I turned them into songs,” the Edinburgh-born artist says simply, echoing the plaintive nature of the completed work. A multi-instrumentalist, Zajac grew up singing and playing Scotland’s oldest national instrument, the Clarsach Harp.

Between 2016 and 2020 she fronted the folk-blues trio Avocet, before moving onto the solo acoustic work which so beautifully shapes the songs on Find Her In The Grass. It was while studying English Literature at Glasgow University that she also started focusing on her poetry, culminating in a collection of 20-odd poems called The Salt I have Produced. Zajac will release her debut album in 2024, recorded with esteemed producer and engineer Dani Bennett-Spragg at Post Electric Studio in Leith, Edinburgh. Being awarded ISF funding will allow this record to be showcased to the largest possible audience in person at SXSW 2024 and will become a key milestone in Iona’s development.