Anohni

Anohni Hegarty (formerly Antony Hegarty, born 1971), styled as ANOHNI, is an English-born singer, songwriter, and visual artist.

She has presented solo work and as the lead singer of the band Anohni and the Johnsons, formerly known as Antony and the Johnsons.

She started her musical career performing with an ensemble of New York musicians as Antony and the Johnsons.

Anohni was born in 1971 in Chichester, England.

She identified as transgender from an early age.

In 1977, her family moved to Amsterdam for a year, and then, in 1981, they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area of California, settling in San Jose, where Anohni attended Lincoln High School and studied music and was an avid record collector.

In 1990, Anohni moved to Manhattan to attend Experimental Theater Wing at New York University.

In 1992 she founded the performance collective Blacklips, later known as Blacklips Performance Cult, with creative partner Johanna Constantine, and she spent the next several years singing in after-hours bars and clubs using pre-recorded cassettes as self-accompaniment as well as writing and directing late-night theatre productions.

After being awarded a grant from New York Foundation for the Arts for the 1996 production of "The Birth of Anne Frank/The Ascension of Marsha P. Johnson" at Performance Space 122, Anohni solicited accompanying musicians to record a number of songs she wrote in the early 1990s.

The ensemble performed for the first time as "Antony and the Johnsons" at The Kitchen as part of William Basinski's installation "Life on Mars" in 1997.

In 1999, the group began to perform more frequently at venues such as Joe's Pub and The Knitting Factory in New York City.

Their self-titled first album was released in 2000 on David Tibet's label Durtro.

British experimental musician David Tibet of Current 93 heard the recording and offered to release it through his Durtro record label; the debut album, Antony and the Johnsons, was released in 2000.

In 2001, Anohni released a follow-up EP through Durtro, I Fell in Love with a Dead Boy, which, in addition to the title track, included a cover of a David Lynch/Angelo Badalamenti song "Mysteries of Love", and a Current 93 song, "Soft Black Stars".

Their second album, I Am a Bird Now (2005), was a commercial and critical success, earning her the Mercury Music Prize.

She told The Telegraph in 2005, "I was listening to OMD, Kate Bush, Culture Club, Alison Moyet and especially Marc and the Mambas, which was this incredibly dark and emotional side project for Marc Almond."

Anohni also recalled how she "saw [her] reflection" in Boy George, the lead singer of Culture Club.

Antony and the Johnsons' 2005 album I Am a Bird Now featured guest performances by Lou Reed, Boy George, Rufus Wainwright and Devendra Banhart.

The album was released in North America by Secretly Canadian Records and in Europe by Rough Trade.

It won the UK's Mercury Prize and was named Album of the Year by Mojo magazine.

The band toured North America, Europe, Australia and parts of South America for a year and a half in support of I am a Bird Now.

The song "Bird Gerhl" was featured in the soundtrack for the movie V for Vendetta.

Antony and the Johnsons collaborated with experimental film maker Charles Atlas and presented Turning in Nov 2006 in Rome, London, Paris, Madrid, and Braga, Portugal.

The concert featured live video portraits of a group of women from the New York City underground.

The Guardian called the piece "fragile, life affirming, and truly wonderful (five stars)" Le Monde in Paris hailed Turning as "Concert-manifeste transsexuel."

In 2007, Anohni created an original soundtrack for a video by Nick Knight featuring the designs of Hussein Chalayan.

She collaborated in 2008 with Prada to create a song called "The Great White Ocean" for their promotional campaign.

Antony and the Johnsons' 5-song Another World EP was released on 7 October 2008.

Antony and the Johnsons' third album, The Crying Light, was released on 19 January 2009.

The album peaked at number 1 on the European Billboard charts.

Anohni has described the theme of the album as being "about landscape and the future."

The album was mixed by Bryce Goggin and includes arrangements by Nico Muhly.

Ann Powers wrote of The Crying Light for the LA Times online, "it's the most personal environmentalist statement possible, making an unforeseen connection between queer culture's identity politics and the green movement. As music, it's simply exquisite – more controlled and considered than anything Antony and the Johnsons have done and sure to linger in the minds of listeners."

After touring throughout North America and Europe in support of their new album, Antony and the Johnsons presented a unique staging of "The Crying Light" with the Manchester Camerata at the Manchester Opera House for the 2009 Manchester International Festival.

The concert hall was transformed with laser effects created by installation artist Chris Levine.

Antony and the Johnsons went on to present concerts with symphonies across Europe in Summer 2009, including the Opera Orchestra of Lyon, the Metropole Orchestra, Roma Sinfonietta and the Montreux Jazz Festival Orchestra.

At Salle Pleyel in Paris, Anohni appeared in a costume designed by Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy.

In 2016, Anohni became the first openly transgender performer nominated for an Academy Award; she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song, along with J. Ralph, for the song "Manta Ray" in the film Racing Extinction.

Her debut solo album, Hopelessness, was released in May 2016 to wide critical acclaim, including another nomination for the Mercury Music Prize and a Brit Award.

In 2023, as Anohni and the Johnsons, the artist released her sixth album, My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross.