It wasn’t so long ago that violinist and cello players were thought of as being very straight and considered rather highbrow and serious. The instruments were just not very sexy. With the arrival of ELO in the early seventies with prominent young attractive musicians making up the string section, the instruments became funky – and the cello players even played standing up. And then Rod Stewart, among others, would feature pretty young lady string players. All of a sudden sticking an instrument under your chin or between your knees became cool. And the cello does not come any more cool and exciting than in the hands of Ayanna Witter-Johnson.
The concert was very much a journey with Ms Witter-Johnson telling us about her family, especially her gran, all from Jamaica, settling in London. She told us about her mother taking her to piano lessons from the age of three and there were photos of her mother and both sets of grandparents on the large screen. I really liked the video of her father and Uncle Mikey talking about the Jamaican sound systems which were so important to the West Indian community in England in the 1970s and 80s. These mobile discos, each trying to out-do each other with volume and size of speakers, were vital in retaining the identity of young black men, enabling them to create their own thing in a society from which they often felt excluded.
Ayanna makes her cello come alive in a way I have rarely heard and I have never seen it played as an accompaniment, in the same way as a guitar, by a solo singer. If you think a cello is played sitting down with a bow gliding across the strings, think again. Ms Witter-Johnson is no slave to convention – she plays her instrument standing up using any and all techniques available to get the sound she wants, including plucking, thereby turning her cello into a mini double-bass. She also has a bass drum pedal hitting a Meinl wood block with which she occasionally tapped out different rhythms. Often using a click track to augment her songs with percussion or more strings, she took us through a repertoire of largely self-penned numbers but included a couple of songs paying homage to Ella Fitzgerald as well as Erroll Garner’s classic Misty. But for me, her best rendition and what has become her signature piece, was Sting’s Roxanne sung and played as you have never heard it before.
Of her influences she cited Nina Simone whose career followed a similar trajectory from piano lessons at a very early age through conservatoire to the popular stage. But don’t think that any of the aforementioned will be apparent in what you hear. Witter-Johnson is one hundred per cent her own woman, one hundred per cent original and authentic.
This was a very slick and professional show with presentation and excellent lighting having been given a lot of careful thought. I feel pleased and privileged to have discovered Ayanna Witter-Johnson. She is a very rare and special artist but I did strike me as odd that the audience was made up middle-aged, middle-class whites with only a very small handful of black people in attendance.
Despite loving the music and having unbounded admiration for Ms Witter-Johnson, I did have issues with the concert.
While Ayanna has a very likeable and engaging personality and stories about her family were always fascinating and enjoyable, I was not sure about the wisdom of encouraging audience participation. Not only were we expected to act as backing singers or supply sound effects for a couple of numbers; we were also encouraged to shout out questions between songs. It didn’t work. Not only were many of the questions inane but they stopped the concert having any sort of flow or gaining any real momentum. It was like being on a roller-coaster ride with incredible highs during the songs, followed by often boring and far too long lows. I have to be honest and say that for me all this chat came very close to spoiling my evening. Pity, because otherwise it would have been a flawless and memorable experience. The word incomparable is often misused but it describes Ayanna Witter-Johnson perfectly – there is nothing with which to compare her unique, enormous talent. Michael Hasted 15th September 2024
