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Acclaimed singer-songwriter, cellist, and composer Ayanna Witter-Johnson releases her new single, “Blue.” It follows the well-received celebration of Windrush titled “Pioneers,” which garnered support from DJ Spoony, Jamie Cullum (BBC Radio 2), Tony Minvielle, and China Moses (Jazz FM). “Blue” serves as the final single from Ayanna’s upcoming second album, *New Roots*, scheduled for release on Friday, September 18, through Hill and Gully Records.
There’s a particular kind of closeness in Ayanna’s work — the sense that you’re being let into a room where something private is being processed in real time. Sonically, she sits in that rare space between the tender intensity of British soul voices such as Lianne La Havas and Ego Ella May, while also nodding to the instrument-led jazz and vocal crossovers pioneered by artists like Esperanza Spalding and Meshell Ndegeocello. Yet Ayanna’s world is unmistakably her own: built around a compositional language rooted in her relationship with the cello.
For Ayanna, the cello is not simply accompaniment — it’s rhythmic anchor and emotional compass, often treated like a bass instrument, a percussive force that grounds the song in the body as much as the spirit. On “Blue”, that approach becomes the centre of gravity. The arrangement is stripped back, allowing her cello playing and voice to lead with unguarded clarity, punctuated by tasteful, moving string interjections that feel less like decoration and more like breath — the kind that catches when you’re trying not to cry.
Originally written pre-pandemic during a “write an album in a week” retreat, “Blue” began as a way to process the emotional fallout of a toxic relationship. But time has a way of widening a song’s meaning, and distance has reshaped its message into something more expansive. Ayanna explains: “With distance and reflection, Blue has grown into something broader: a meditation on patterns of pain and the ways in which victimhood can quietly shape multiple areas of life. The song now stands as a metaphor for a range of difficult relationships and situations — moments where suffering becomes familiar, and where growth comes from recognising and gently releasing that identity.”
That sense of transformation — not through spectacle, but through stillness — runs throughout New Roots. Written across retreats, hotel rooms, lockdown isolation and quiet pockets of life on the road, the album documents moments where stillness becomes a portal: a place to hear ancestral voices, confront personal truth, and re-anchor in what really matters. It’s a record that deepens Ayanna’s status as a musical polymath and world-builder, delving into heritage and spiritual practice while reflecting on British-Caribbean identity, the inheritance of Windrush-era wisdom, grief and remembrance, and the quiet resilience required to keep choosing oneself.
As Ayanna puts it: “It’s an album about finding centre — personally, culturally, and cosmically — and about learning that new roots can be grown even in unfamiliar or fractured ground.”
Already championed by icons including Gilles Peterson, DJ Spoony and Jools Holland, Ayanna has collaborated and toured with musical legends such as Andrea Bocelli, Peter Gabriel, Nitin Sawhney and Anoushka Shankar. Her televised performances include Later… with Jools Holland, the BBC Proms and Sing It Loud: Black and Proud. A graduate of Trinity Laban Conservatoire and the Manhattan School of Music, she has also composed for the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) — and will launch her new residency with the LSO at St Luke’s, London, on 16 September.
New Roots is released Friday 18 September via Hill and Gully Records.
For further information on the artist, please visit the following links:
Ayanna Witter-Johnson photo by Jordan Woods, courtesy of Bridge The Gap
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