Talking to singer-songwriter Ana Silvera is the perfect antidote to the commercial clamouring of reality show contestants and gimmick acts in the Christmas charts.

Her journey into a musical career has been unhurried and rich with experiences that have taken her from Hornsey, where she grew up, to Ibiza, where she sang jazz in cafés, to New York, where she recorded her 2012 debut album The Aviary.

“It’s easy in this industry to start fixating on ideas, which have nothing to do with it,“ says the 34-year-old who says going on the X Factor would make her break down in tears, “like focusing on external success or amount of popularity or approval.

“But if you can really enjoy the process of just creating and making things as good as they possibly can be I think that’s a reward in itself and everything else is extraneous to that. That’s the principle I try and stick to.“

It seems only natural then that we are talking about her coming home to the Roundhouse to perform and record her choral song-cycle Oracles in a series of three concerts – a piece she first wrote in 2011 and has been working on for the last four years.

“I have been refining it and finding different sounds and musicians who could best capture what I wanted to create and now it has all come together.“ The project is very personal to her as it was largely inspired by the death of her brother Daniel Galvin.

“He passed away three years before I started writing it and it really was a way of working through my own grief. He was in the psychiatric system for many years and died as a consequence of that.

“The piece is my response to his death and, I hope, more of a universal piece about grief and loss and that journey to, not exactly wholeness, because you can never be whole after losing someone like that, but acceptance.“

Ana was given the nudge to put pen to paper when Marcus Daley, the director of the Roundhouse, suggested she did a project with the venue’s choir and she first performed Oracles as a sell-out joint headliner with Imogen Heap on the main stage in 2012, and it was subsequently nominated for a British Composers Award.

She put it on the back-burner for the last two years while she collaborated on a piece for the Royal Ballet entitled Cassandra, which was based on a Greek myth and premiered at the end of last year.

“It was amazing to be working with some of the best dancers in the world and I felt really proud of what we created.

“With collaborating you have to get out of the way in terms of the ego and not being precious. You have to learn to be quite open.“ Ana, who admires artist such as Silvio Rodriguez, Rufus Wainwright, Regina Spektor, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, draws much of her inspiration from fairytales and legends.

“I have written quite a few songs about daily life and think it can be just as magical, but myths and fairytales allow you to access emotions in not such a super direct way.

“Very personal, very confessional music can be fantastic, but sometimes you can come across as too sentimental or a bit twee.“

She grew up in Harefield Road listening to her dad’s ’60s and ’70s folk music collection and was encouraged by her mum to “tinker“ on the family piano, and says the creative atmosphere of the area “really nurtured what I do and my inspiration“.

“I went to St Michaels in Highgate, which had a strong emphasis on music, and I was also a member of the North London Children’s Choir. When I was 12 I was asked by the choir to audition for the English National Opera for a little solo role, which I got, and it kick started my music career.“

As a consequence Ana went on to study singing at the Guildhall and began writing her own songs. But then in her early 20s she went off to see the world.

“I lived in Ibiza for a while, which everyone thinks must have been partying all the time, but I was actually in the countryside up in the north and I was just sitting on the beach singing and having people singing along.”

She returned to London and studied English Literature at UCL, then taught English in Berlin and moved to New York.

Ana says travelling has made her appreciate the “richness and variety“ of London even more and she is really excited to now be back home at the Roundhouse to finally record Oracles with her family and friends in the audience.

“There something special about recording it live because you know that moment will be captured forever.“

Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, January 22 to 24, 7pm. Details: 0300 6789 222, roundhouse.org.uk