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. Their self-titled first album was released in on David Tibet 's label Durtro. In , Anohni became the first openly transgender performer nominated for an Academy Award ; [ 5 ] 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. Anohni was born in in Chichester , England. She identified as transgender from an early age.
In , her family moved to Amsterdam for a year, [ 7 ] and then, in , they moved to the San Francisco Bay Area of California, settling in San Jose, [ 8 ] [ 9 ] where Anohni attended Lincoln High School and studied music and was an avid record collector. In 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.
Johnson" at Performance Space , Anohni solicited accompanying musicians to record a number of songs she wrote in the early s. 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 The song "Bird Gerhl" was featured in the soundtrack for the movie V for Vendetta. 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 " [ 17 ] Le Monde in Paris hailed Turning as "Concert-manifeste transsexuel. In , Anohni created an original soundtrack for a video by Nick Knight featuring the designs of Hussein Chalayan. She collaborated in with Prada to create a song called "The Great White Ocean" for their promotional campaign.
