London-born vocalist-composer, multi-instrumentalist, author and painter, Joanna Wallfisch heralds from generations of professional musicians. However, music was not always simply a focus of work in her family, but of survival. Her grandmother, Anita Lasker Wallfisch, now 98, survived Auschwitz Birkenau as she was invited by conductor Alma Rose to play the cello in the camp orchestra (a band that entertained the Nazis in exchange for life). Post liberation Anita became a founding member of the English Chamber Orchestra. Joanna’s brother Simon is a renowned cellist and opera singer, and her eldest brother Benjamin is an Oscar and Grammy nominated film composer. Her parents, Elizabeth and Raphael, are concert violinist and cellist respectively.

Since 2011 Joanna has released six albums of original music, has featured on various film soundtracks, and appears on four tracks of the 2021 chart topping record Dawn Fm, by The Weeknd.
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Music and creativity have been the through line of the Wallfisch family, and integral to Joanna’s life and career. World Music Report describes Joanna’s songs as “quintessential heart-music by a vocalist who seems to have connected with the deepest recesses of her being emerging into brightness again with songs of haunting beauty.” Her music defies genre classification as she effortlessly imbues her songs with nuances of jazz, classical, art-song, and folk, carrying her “clear-eyed poetry” (Boston Globe) and “striking vocals” (Hothouse). Joanna’s unique musical background shines through in her own compositional style, evoking her classical routes with her love of jazz, art-song, folk and pop, pushing boundaries of genre and stylistic expectations.
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Joanna is master in the art of live vocal looping, and plays the guitar, ukulele, charango, piano and flute. She composes for ensembles including string quartets, woodwinds, and choir. In the summer of 2023 Joanna’s piece “Uprise Skyward” is being premiered by the Laude Ensemble at First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, as part of the NEO Voice Festival. In April 2023 she performed in a brand new opera by Olan Jones with Overtone Industries at USC.
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Joanna’s gift for music encompasses her passion for both performance and for education. She strives to helps others, promoting messages of peace and community, healing and equality through the arts, via education and outreach programs.
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Currently residing in Los Angeles, Joanna sings with the Laude Ensemble, is on songwriting faculty at Los Angeles College of Music, works regularly as a session vocalist, is an early childhood music educator for non-profit Urban Voices Project and owns her own company, Little Whale Music. In August 2023 she her sixth record is out on Galileo Music.

Joanna also recently became a mother – her greatest achievement yet.

EDUCATION:

Bachelor of Fine Arts | Central Saint Martins College of Art, London
Master of Music in Jazz Performance/Composition | Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London

ALBUMS:

• Wild Swan – 2011
• The Origin Of Adjustable Things – 2015 (Sunnyside Records)
• Gardens In My Mind – 2016 (Sunnyside Records)
• Blood and Bone – 2018
• Far Away From Any Place Called Home – 2019
• All In Time – 2023

BOOKS:

The Great Song Cycle – Portland to LA on Two Wheels and a Song (UWA Press)

SIMILAR FACULTY