Juana Maria Camilleri was born in Mallorca, Spain. She is the daughter of Charlie Camilleri and Stephanie Hughes. Stephanie is an artist and writer and Charlie was a Jazz Trumpet player.
Juana was raised in New York, forty-five minutes from Manhattan, where her father played and recorded with many of the prominent jazz players of his time. His music had an early influence on her. When Juana was four, she sat in the audience at a Diana Ross and The Three Supremes concert. Her dad was in the band and Diana invited all the little girls to get up on stage and sing and dance with the Supremes.
Juana's education was alternative. She attended The Rockland Project School, where she focused on the performing arts; music, dance and drama. When Juana was eight, her mother gave her a guitar and she started taking lessons from a teacher at her school. Once she learned a few open chords and a some folk songs, she began to experiment with her own melodies and lyrics. Thus began her dream of someday becoming a singer/songwriter.
In her late teens, Juana moved to Martha's Vineyard, where she met her future husband. In her twenties, Juana's focus was on writing plays and then film scripts. For 12 years she didn't touch her guitar, except to move it from one closet to another. Instead of following her musical aspirations, she attended the University of Hartford and earned her degree in Communications and Theater. After graduating, she and her husband moved across the country, from Connecticut to Portland, Oregon and in the four years that followed, they had three children.
In 1995, Juana enrolled at The Northwest Film Center as a certificate student and began to attend classes in writing, directing and producing films. And then something happened. While editing her first student film, she started to dream songs. They came to her in her sleep, complete melodies and lyrics. She'd wake up thinking, "if I were still writing songs, that would be a really good one."
One year later, Juana was performing her songs at local open mics. And three years after that, she was recording her first cd in LA.
Today, Juana has two cd's, "Palisades" and "Now." Her new project, titled "Finding Mississippi" was recorded in Portland, Oregon and will be available soon online.
Juana's sound is ... unique. Her music has been compared to an eclectic bunch, like: Grace Slick, Carol King, Crissy Hines, Patti Smith, Joni Mitchell, Natalie Merchant, Carly Simon, Sarde, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, The Mama's and The Papa's, Cheryll Crow, and ... Pink Floyd.