WIN - Jazz FM's Album of the Week

Returning with her first solo album in three years, acclaimed singer-songwriter, cellist, composer and MOBO-nominee Ayanna Witter-Johnson is excited to announce the release of ‘New Rootsʼ. Out on her Hill and Gully Records imprint on Friday 18 September, listeners are welcomed into an intimate world born in solitude, but shaped by lineage, memory and deep listening. Cementing Ayannaʼs status as a musical polymath and world-builder, the record delves into her Caribbean heritage and spiritual practice, imbuing her exploratory, soul-leaning sound with the colour of jazz and groundedness of folk story-telling.

Sitting somewhere between the unique intimacy of British soul acts like Lianne La Havas and Ego Ella May, but with nods to the instrument-rooted jazz & vocal crossover pioneered by the likes of Esperanza Spalding and Meshell Ndegeocello, Ayannaʼs compositional approach is centred around her relationship with the cello. The instrument functions as both rhythmic anchor and emotional compass, often used as a bass-like, percussive force that grounds the songs in the body as much as the spirit.

Written across retreats, hotel rooms, lockdown isolation, and quiet pockets of life on the road, ‘New Roots‘ documents moments where stillness becomes a portal — a place to hear ancestral voices, confront personal truth, and re-anchor in what really matters. Threaded through the album are reflections on British-Caribbean identity, with tracks like ‘Pioneersʼ ruminating on the inheritance of Windrush-era wisdom, grief and remembrance, cycles of rupture and repair, and the quiet resilience required to keep choosing oneself. Ayanna comments: “Itʼs an album about finding centre — personally, culturally, and cosmically — and about learning that new roots can be grown even in unfamiliar or fractured ground.ˮ

Ayanna has collaborated and toured with musical legends including Andrea Bocelli, Peter Gabriel, Nitin Sawhney and Anoushka Shankar. A graduate of Trinity Laban Conservatoire and the Manhattan School of Music, she has composed for the London Symphony Orchestra, and made history as the only non-American to win Amateur Night Live at Harlemʼs legendary Apollo Theater — the prize money from which funded her first EP.

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