Home with a view that’s music to her eyes
Molly Johnson’s sunset vista is her favourite thing about her family’s midtown home
Molly Johnson is running late. She’s been delayed multi-tasking on the second annual Kensington Market Jazz Festival. But she’s determined to get home to catch the sunset — Johnson’s favourite time in her beloved midtown apartment.
The multi-award winning singer, songwriter, broadcaster, philanthropist and Order of Canada recipient has come a long way from the 1980s when she lodged at the iconic Cameron House Hotel in Queen West. In addition to Johnson, everyone from Ron Sexsmith to Jane Siberry and the late Handsome Ned has performed there.
Johnson, 58, makes it home with time to spare and her sunset is as advertised: absurdly glorious from her ninth-floor view.
“I had height restrictions,” she allows. “I didn’t want a glass tower waving in the breeze.”
Johnson and husband Rob Moore, who runs a communications firm, live here with their two sons, Otis 21, and Henry, 17, and cockapoo Pepper.
“Before we listed our house (in the Little Italy neighbourhood), I made a list of our apartment needs: kids, dogs, tennis rackets and hockey equipment — it had to meet our expectations,” she stipulates. A major bonus was the sunset view. The apartment covers more than 2,000 square feet and has three bedrooms, three baths, a fireplace, walkin closets and full-sized eat-in kitchen. It came with refinished dark floors and built-in shelving and storage. As well, there are two balconies with gardens for Johnson to putter in.
Two couches face back to back in the living room, opposite a piano. Johnson is a party girl who doesn’t drink but is a born raconteur.
“The place is soundproofed so I can play piano all night — my neighbour’s bed is right here,” she adds, indicating the wall adjacent to the piano, on which rest two vintage records: one of Oscar Peterson and the other Ella Fitzgerald, which are both from a flea market in Israel.
The red canoe print in the hallway is from and by musician/artist Kurt Swinghammer.
The white armoire beneath it is a wedding gift and the gilt mirror on the opposite wall came from Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar, a reggae band she regularly performed with.
On a living room wall hangs an imposing painting of a majestic red fox by Julia McNeely, whose art Johnson collects. “She sold paintings at my son’s art fair and for Christmas, the kids gave me the fox,” Johnson explains.
The dining room table is overseen by a framed poster of Willi’s Wine Bar.
“My husband worked at Willi’s Wine Bar in Paris,” she says. Johnson has a soft spot for Paris because it jump-started her career. “By fluke, a woman manager in Paris put one of my songs on her answering machine and she called up all the record companies — and that’s how I got my record deal.”
Her true beginning was on stage at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, when Toronto icon Ed Mirvish chose Johnson and her brother to perform in the musical Porgy and Bess. Then it was on to ballet.
“I credit the National Ballet School for teaching me to sing because it is physical,” she explains. “It’s all in the core strength, discipline, focus, drive and confidence.”
She got sidetracked into music. “My big sister’s girlfriends Carole Pope and Shawne Jackson were singing backup, writing and singing their own songs. (I thought), ‘I can do that!’ ” she recalls.
Johnson also served as weekend host of CBC’s Radio 2 Morning from 2008-13. She confesses agonizing over the snappy patter needed between song selections. “As a DJ on CBC how many times can you say ‘Jim Cuddy is good looking?’ Finally June Cuddy (his mother) called to remind me ‘I have other children.’ ”
Johnson is working on a new album — it is very hush-hush. “I am talking to guys in L.A. and writing with Canadian and American songwriters. It is not a jazz album.
“And I’ve written stuff on that darned piano and on the patio,” she says of her home surroundings.
She launched the Kensington Market Jazz Festival last year with more than 200 Toronto-based musicians. She’s busy working on this year’s event, which coincides with the end of the Toronto International Film Festival, Sept. 15-17.
In 1993, Johnson established the annual Kumbaya Festival to benefit Canadian charities working around HIV and AIDS. Through this connection, she performed for Diana and Prince Charles during their 1991 tour and stay aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia in Toronto Harbour.
“I’d met her through Casey House working with AIDS and they invited a bunch of us for an ‘informal gathering’ — which in our world means black tie. It was like a pub, all of us gathered around the piano singing — Diana, too. She was lovely and her skin was luminous.”