Johnson Gabriel
This could have been a case of once bitten, twice shy… johnsonG got his first chance at composing his first dance track ‘When the feeling is Gone‘ on Dancevilla Records‘ label in 2009. Although the track was destined to be that year’s summer floor-filler it fell short due to poor programming. So he set about writing ‘In This Life’, a new socially conscious deep trance hit through Hans Kristian Hvaal-Borresen from HitNation Publishing. Unfortunately, when the publisher literally vanished into thin air, he was left with a killer track and nowhere to release it, until in 2016 he met and started collaborating with label-owner/producer Ted Peters on a couple of exciting vocal deep Detroit-style house tracks .. ‘Konnected‘, ‘Today is the Day‘ and ‘Darkness’ are the first of a series of tracks to be released on Ted’s label, MF Records.
While growing up in the U.K., johnson had his eyes firmly fixed on and copied styles from legendary performing artists like Prince, Michael Jackson and James Brown, he got into modelling after moving to The Netherlands and not long afterwards began singing during fashion shows. He was approached to become the 3rd member of the dance-trio De Foetsies, with which a Dutch translated rendition of The Fugees’ ‘Killing me softly’, ‘Hij maakte mij gek (met z’n ..)’, made it to no. 3 in the National Dutch Top 40 Charts. The group toured Holland and Belgium for two years up until 1998.
The (NCRV) Gordon Gospel Theatre Tour followed and kicked off the beginning of many T.V. performances in programmes like the ‘Sterrenplayback Show’, ‘Het Gevoel van..’, ‘Foster Parents Plan’. Notably, it was during these early years that johnson also started developing his song-writing skills in the festival Pop/Rock band ‘US’. Add other fortunate endeavours to the mix like backing-vocals for international artists like Lionel Ritchie, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias and Phil Collins, when they toured Holland, backing-vocals for participants in the Dutch and German T.V. programme editions of ‘The Winner Is’, a hook-up with DJ Jurgen for the 2008 track ‘A Higher Love’, feature singer performances with SoulMachine NL, taking over the helm as the headline performer for the late Bobby Farrell’s Boney M. Show and it’s relatively easy to see where his performer skills were developed.