“Kiss A Stranger” from Canadian-born and bred singer/songwriter Miranda Joan
Miranda Joan is a Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and musician. Born in Montréal, Miranda spent her formative years growing up on the north shore of Vancouver, filling diaries with emotions and experiences; creating a safe place to land for both her heart and her imagination that would go on to form the basis of her songwriting. Her influences range from Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, and Carole King to Anderson Paak., Little Dragon and Robyn, draw on both the classic and the contemporary. Miranda’s personal experiences and the artistic and spiritual energies of the places she has called home flow through intricate songwriting and playful production to form a unique blend of Soul-Pop.
With the fluidity of growing up along the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver and the joy-de-vivre and creativity that Montréal exudes radiating through her music, Miranda has always sustained strong roots in Canada. A shy child, her first experiences of music and performing came from high school drama and musical theatre. Leaning into Soul, R&B and Jazz sounds, she found a natural home for her voice. Miranda began to shape her sound using her lifetime of journals and influence from singer-songwriters of all genres that had fed into her writing process throughout her life. She moved to New York to study Jazz and opened her inquisitive sound and creative style to a host of artists and producers in her musical surroundings, as well as the grittiness and intensity of the city.
Establishing herself in the Brooklyn Soul/Jazz community, Miranda is the co-host and co-founder of Brooklyn’s Femme Jam (NYC’s first all-female-led jam session); a community initiative to create a womxn-led space with an emphasis on female musicians that fosters inclusivity. Arts mentorship has been an important through-line in Joan’s career and for the past eight years, she has been a music mentor with the non-profit SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young where she works with youth 8-18 who stutter.
She has performed on national tours, played sold-out and headline shows at well-known New York venues, provided backing vocals for the likes of The Killers, Shawn Mendes, Lorde, Kylie Minogue and Andy Grammar, and joined Sly5thAve at Montréal Jazz Festival with the Orchestre National de Jazz de Montréal, in a tribute to Dr Dre. In 2021 she was selected as one of First Up with RBCxMusic Emerging Artists as she released her debut album ‘Windborne’, the follow-up to her 2019 EP “Still”. Both releases received consistent radio airplay in Vancouver and Los Angeles and led to a sync placement on the Canadian TV show The Strays. Recent singles “Overstimulated” and “I Love You, Dwayne” have received support from NPR, Consequence, EARMILK, Exclaim! and airplay from CBC and MountainFM in Canada and Tony Minvielle (Jazz FM) in the UK.
Blossoming out of what was originally intended as a one-song collaboration, Miranda has spent recent years collaborating with Ben Carr AKA CARRTOONS on her sophomore album ‘Overstimulated’. “It is an album book-ended by songs of affirmation, of rooting, of returning to and loving oneself, intertwined with the messy, chaotic and interconnected web of my hopes, dreams, imagination, love, and heartache”, Miranda muses.
Simultaneously leaning into and letting go of the excessive and overstimulating, the LP sees Miranda shift into a space of contemporary Jazz and Soul, where the instrumental and acoustic meets the electronic. Developed songwriting and storytelling sits alongside production from CARRTOONS and additional offerings from the likes of Sly5thAve, Jake Sherman, Ben Williams, The Huntertones and Kristine Kruta.
https://www.mirandajoan.com
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