JohannaandtheDustyFloor dashboard
Filmmakers » Director, Composer, Producer
Australian-born, Hungarian-bred, Brooklyn-based Johanna Cranitch of Johanna and the Dusty Floor was born into music. Her Hungarian jazz pianist grandfather declared on the day she was born: “This one will be musical.” And so it began.
Her mother enrolled her in the Kodaly school of early childhood music education and her Irish/Australian father brought his love of Gregorian chant and ecclesiastical music to the table, guiding Johanna toward the stage. At nine years old she was singing St Matthew’s Passion at the Sydney Opera House.
She joined Opera Australia’s Childrens’ Chorus and thus began her career in music. Opera first, pop second. From Fleetwood Mac to Kate Bush to Loreena McKennitt to Wham, Johanna’s parents played records that would influence her dreamy pop leanings in the future.
First a more formal study of music. After attending a performance arts high school, Johanna enrolled in a jazz degree program at the Australian Institute of Music, where she graduated with honors. There she developed a love for the vocal stylings of Ella Fitzgerald and Joni Mitchell. She performed across Australia as a jazz vocalist before moving to NYC.
Once in New York, she convinced the head of prestigious Nola Recording Studios to let her intern and she was soon on her way to engineering full time for the likes of Liza Minelli, Hank Jones and Bette Midler. But that was not all she was doing. Over a period of four years at Nola, Johanna had been writing and recording her own songs behind the scenes, after hours. She was always the first one in and the last one out. One day she decided it was time to make her own album and so the cat was out of the bag. Johanna was on her way to becoming an artist in her own right.
She began by singing backup for various projects in NYC and touring extensively with the band Wheatus. By the time she sat down to put together her own debut, she had over three hundred demos to sift through. “Funnily enough, once I decided to make a record, I couldn’t stop writing new songs. I’d been traveling all year, moving around from Europe to Australia to the United States, driving from NY to LA and back again. I was searching for something in my nomadic state and I found it in these songs. I shelved the old demos to make room for the new, so they sit growing cobwebs to this day.”
Wherever those songs might be, the songs that made the final release were well worth the sacrifice. In November 2010, Johanna and the Dusty Floor quietly released The Forest EP, a crystal clear glittering glimpse of what was yet to come with the full length. Recorded in Australia, LA and New York, Johanna and the Dusty Floor’s Northern Lights is a lush and layered adventure, beginning with piano-based composition and ending in a swirl of strings and counterpoint vocals spanning the heights of the female range. It shimmers and moves between moods of passion, desire, and cooly calculated regret. Here and there allusions to Kate Bush, Bjork and Bat for Lashes give way to the jazz upbringing that started it all for Johanna. Whatever comparisons may be drawn, Northern Lights shines brightly in its own unique atmosphere.
Her mother enrolled her in the Kodaly school of early childhood music education and her Irish/Australian father brought his love of Gregorian chant and ecclesiastical music to the table, guiding Johanna toward the stage. At nine years old she was singing St Matthew’s Passion at the Sydney Opera House.
She joined Opera Australia’s Childrens’ Chorus and thus began her career in music. Opera first, pop second. From Fleetwood Mac to Kate Bush to Loreena McKennitt to Wham, Johanna’s parents played records that would influence her dreamy pop leanings in the future.
First a more formal study of music. After attending a performance arts high school, Johanna enrolled in a jazz degree program at the Australian Institute of Music, where she graduated with honors. There she developed a love for the vocal stylings of Ella Fitzgerald and Joni Mitchell. She performed across Australia as a jazz vocalist before moving to NYC.
Once in New York, she convinced the head of prestigious Nola Recording Studios to let her intern and she was soon on her way to engineering full time for the likes of Liza Minelli, Hank Jones and Bette Midler. But that was not all she was doing. Over a period of four years at Nola, Johanna had been writing and recording her own songs behind the scenes, after hours. She was always the first one in and the last one out. One day she decided it was time to make her own album and so the cat was out of the bag. Johanna was on her way to becoming an artist in her own right.
She began by singing backup for various projects in NYC and touring extensively with the band Wheatus. By the time she sat down to put together her own debut, she had over three hundred demos to sift through. “Funnily enough, once I decided to make a record, I couldn’t stop writing new songs. I’d been traveling all year, moving around from Europe to Australia to the United States, driving from NY to LA and back again. I was searching for something in my nomadic state and I found it in these songs. I shelved the old demos to make room for the new, so they sit growing cobwebs to this day.”
Wherever those songs might be, the songs that made the final release were well worth the sacrifice. In November 2010, Johanna and the Dusty Floor quietly released The Forest EP, a crystal clear glittering glimpse of what was yet to come with the full length. Recorded in Australia, LA and New York, Johanna and the Dusty Floor’s Northern Lights is a lush and layered adventure, beginning with piano-based composition and ending in a swirl of strings and counterpoint vocals spanning the heights of the female range. It shimmers and moves between moods of passion, desire, and cooly calculated regret. Here and there allusions to Kate Bush, Bjork and Bat for Lashes give way to the jazz upbringing that started it all for Johanna. Whatever comparisons may be drawn, Northern Lights shines brightly in its own unique atmosphere.
Films by JohannaandtheDustyFloor
