After completing a degree in opera singing Janet was a member of eclectic Wellington bands Four Volts and Six Volts from 1984 to 1991 performing gigs, dance and theatre shows.
She has been part of the composing partnership Plan 9 since the mid 1990s when their first score was Forgotten Silver. Their many film and tv score credits include A Remarkable Place To Die, Dark City: The Cleaner, Pacific Mother, Our Big Blue Backyard, What We Do In The Shadows, Antarctica: A Year On Ice, Predicament, Perfect Strangers, and numerous series for Discovery, National Geographic, NHK and Animal Planet. Their score for Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old was a nominee for the 2019 Critics Choice Documentary Awards. They have won Best Feature Film Score 3 times at the NZ Film & TV Awards.
In 2021 they were awarded the SOUNZ Contemporary Award for their album The Bewilderness. With her usual collaborators Plan 9 and David Long she co-wrote the dwarves song Misty Mountains for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and was singing coach for the actors. The song was used by Howard Shore as one of the main soundtrack themes of the movie. She was the voice of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and was involved in creating cultural music and musical sound design for all 3 films as well as composing additional music for King Kong.
Janet is a committee member of The Screen Music And Sound Guild.
