On 16 August the BBC Concert Orchestra and Daniel Bartholomew-Poyser took to the Snape Maltings stage to perform Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s FAIYA! – a vibrant 9-minute dance suite. The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of a special edition of Friday Night is Music Night, showcasing Black and Global Majority artists as part of the Classically Black weekend at Snape Maltings – a collaboration between Black Lives in Music and Britten Pears Arts.
FAIYA! is inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes. Witter-Johnson was especially drawn to the Magyar-Germanic retelling of the story, in which a young girl is seduced away from her own creative path by a pair of dazzling red leather shoes that ultimately dance her to her death – for her, a powerful metaphor for the distractions of modern life and the ways they can lure us away from our gifts, purpose and unique path if we allow them.
Its music draws on the composer’s Jamaican heritage, weaving together traditional Nyabinghi rhythms with the energy and drive of contemporary Dancehall – its propulsive score mirrors the girl’s loss of control in the fairytale. The title is Jamaican patois for the English word fire—a force that can spread with exhilarating speed before becoming all-consuming.
The work was originally created for Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra as a multi-ability work. The reorchestrated version of the work was also commissioned and premiered by the LSO in 2025, conducted by Enyi Okpara. Witter-Johnson has also collaborated with the LSO Percussion Ensemble for her 2023 album Ocean Floor and at the Edinburgh International Festival.
Witter-Johnson was also joined by her band to present a preview of her new album New Roots on 14 August – an exploration of “where I come from, what home means, and the roots that connects us across…generations. It draws on my British Caribbean heritage, but it's also about resilience, joy, healing, and finding belonging.” The record pulls together Witter-Johnson’s musical touchstones – jazz, reggae, soul, classical, improvisation – into one sound world. It is released in September 2026 and will be launched in a special concert at LSO St. Luke’s – which also begins her tenure as an Associate Artist there.