Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons

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You might expect some of Antony Hegarty’s influences — pioneering gender-bender Boy George and art-pop icon Kate Bush. But it was a surprising musical pioneer who really set Hegarty on his musical path.

“I remember once when I was about 18 I heard Ray Charles’ cover of the Beatles’ ballad ‘Yesterday,’ and it really changed my life in a funny way,” says Hegarty. “I realized how far you could take it. I knew the song ‘Yesterday,’ and it seemed kind of regular to me. Then I heard how far he’d taken it with his style and his approach. It was a real lesson on the expressive power of music.”

Anyone who has heard Hegarty with his group Antony and the Johnsons can attest that Hegarty took Charles’ expressive lessons to heart. With a voice that’s simultaneously feminine and masculine, Hegarty delivers a delicate croon that manages to sound operatic and folky.

Born in England in 1971 and raised in England and California, Hegarty grew up singing in school and church. Yet, like other children, he was absorbing pop music.

Hegarty, who often refers to himself as a transgender person, was particularly affected by Boy George of the Culture Club.

“When I was 12 years old that just really blew my mind,” says Hegarty.

It was after moving to New York in 1990 that Hegarty began to find his place in the artistic community, among drag queens and performance artists, creating a group called the Blacklips and, in 1995, Antony and the Johnsons.

In addition to musicians, Hegarty was inspired by Japanese dancer/dance troupe leader Kazou Ohno, one of the pioneers of butoh dance. Ohno graces the cover of the new Antony and the Johnsons’ album “The Crying Light.”

“There’s almost a poetic vocabulary that they use to explore their own bodies, to explore movement,” says Hegarty. “Some of that stuff I’ve transferred into musical exploration. Reaching into the forms of other things in nature. Seeking to embody the essence of a flamingo or a tree or a ghost or the heartbeat of a salmon or the rush of wind through the leaves. The idea that you could somehow give a voice to it expressively, it starts to be sort of dreamy and magical — full of rich color.”

He says it isn’t butoh dance itself, which can be many very different types of dance, but Ohno’s personal take on it.

“Watching him on stage and the way his soul would sort of emerge from his solar plexus,” says Hegarty, “A dream of his mother sort of married to a dream of his inner child or the divinity of his child spirit … Something sort of timeless. There would be this sacred space around him. It was sort of dreamy — like all the air around him would turn into diamonds. When I would see it, I would always start to cry because it’s so beautiful.”

Although there is a definite poetry to Hegarty’s lyrics, he says he hasn’t read much poetry.

“To be honest, I can’t hardly read poetry because I don’t understand it,” he says, laughing.

He says it’s just taken time to drop his preconceptions of how songs should be.

Hegarty says he is now comfortable and confident with his art.

“As a singer I don’t really question my sense of connectedness to music,” he says. “I feel like my voice is just a natural, just like breathing. And I think that’s how we’d all feel in a different society where singing was embraced as every human being’s expressive birthright.”