Ayanna Witter-Johnson: This is who I am in this chapter
Photographer: Nick Howe
I like clever women, I like talking to clever women. They’re women who are curious, thinking, women who know and love themselves and because they love themselves you can hear it and see it in the work they make, continually exploring the reaches of their creativity. Singer, songwriter, cellist and composer Ayanna Witter-Johnson is one of those women.
Clever women also seem to have done a lot, they have a lot of qualifications, here’s a quick summary - Ayanna graduated with a first from both Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and the Manhattan School of Music. She’s been a featured artist with saxophonist Courtney Pine’s Afropeans: Jazz Warriors, a member of sitarist Anoushka Shankar’s Traces of You album tour and is the only non-American to have won amateur night live at the Apollo theatre in Harlem New York.
She’s released 3 EPs, through her own label Hill And Gully records and her full length album Road Runner, came out last year.
We talk about Ayanna’s journey from a place at Cambridge to study French and Spanish to a scholarship at the Manhattan school of music. From classical music composition and orchestration to jazz, songwriting and life as a performer. We talk about incorporating the cello, which she’s named Reuben, into her performance. Valuing her creative independence and our mutual love of 90’s hip hop and RnB.
Guest: Ayanna Witter-Johnson
Title: ‘This is who I am in this chapter'
Song Excerpt: Crossroads, Wooden Woman, & Playground from the album Road Runner and Ain’t I A Woman all by Ayanna Witter-Johnson
Artist on Playlist: Leroy Burgess