Composer, songwriter, cellist, and vocalist Ayanna Witter-Johnson is Artist in Focus at September Me 2026, opening the festival in Amersfoort on 24 September. She launches the four-day programme – celebrating female creators and musicians from the Netherlands and beyond this year – with her band and the Ragazze Quartet, with whom she previously appeared at the Concertgebouw in 2023.
The opening concert featured Witter-Johnson’s Mento Mood – a 9-minute work for string quartet based on Jamaican folk music – and Branle Riddim – for string quartet and percussion, blending the French renaissance dance with Jamaican dancehall rhythms. They also performed the 19-minute Island Suite, originally created for herself and the Solem Quartet.
Witter-Johnson says of Island Suite, “What I took…was particularly Bartók’s affinity to Eastern European folk music. I took that to explore my relationship to Jamaican folk legacy. I don’t think I’ve written a piece like it; there’s references to Queen Nanny, folksongs, my childhood, all sorts of influences on me as an artist”. The piece interweaves passages for quartet and cello with spoken word from Witter-Johnson.
On 26 September Witter-Johnson partners with percussion ensemble BL!NDMAN for her Ocean Floor Suite, based on the 2023 album created for the London Symphony Orchestra Percussion Ensemble and pianist Gwilym Simcock, and recorded at the London Jazz Festival. The 16-minute work is in three movements, with a text by Witter-Johnson that reflects on the atrocity perpetrated by the owners of the slave ship Zong in 1781, when the people who made up their cargo were thrown overboard.
Witter-Johnson connects those events – directly affecting her ancestors – to a drowning she herself witnessed off the coast of Jamaica. “At the same time”, she writes, “a baptism in the water was taking place further along the coast, and in the other direction along the beach children were playing, splashing in the shallow waves, building sandcastles, and burying each other knee-deed…I scanned the horizon in awe of the spectrum of events. Even amidst the darkness of death there is still room for joy.”
Witter-Johnson was also joined by her band to present her new album New Roots on 26 September – 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 was released in September 2026 and was launched in a special concert at LSO St. Luke’s – which also begins her tenure as an Associate Artist this season.