Composer Ayanna Witter-Johnson: ‘Growing up, I never once saw a Black conductor’

Composer, singer and classical radio presenter Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s closing performance at Classically Black, the UK’s first Black classical music festival, will be broadcast in full on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds from Wednesday 23 October.

The sold-out event was held at Kings Place in London on 19 October and explored the contributions of Black and global majority composers and performers.

It was organised by Black Lives in Music, the organisation launched to address racial inequality in the music industry and help create opportunities for Black, Asian and ethnically diverse musicians and professionals.

Witter-Johnson told The Independent that the event was “a wonderful opportunity to recognise, represent and celebrate the diversity of creative expression of Black classical musicians from across the African Diaspora, while building a legacy by encouraging new audiences and creating opportunities for up-and-coming musicians.”

Her concert was particularly exciting, she said, because she had been able to showcase “the full breadth of my creativity” for the first time in one concert.

The first half comprised a selection of pieces for strings, harp, clarinet, piano, percussion and voice that she had been commissioned to compose over the years, all featuring her distinct fusion of classical and Caribbean folk music styles.

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In the second half, Witter-Johnson was joined by her band along with members of the ensemble to deliver renditions of her contemporary songs: “It’s so rare to be able to reveal to an audience so many sides of me as an artist in one evening,” she said.

Encouraged in music by her mother from the age of three, Witter-Johnson was taught classical piano and had reached a grade 8 level by the age of 12, at which point she began weekly cello lessons.

Her classical education mingled with the traditional Ghanaian music she and her mother danced to: “I remember being steeped in the traditional dances of the Ewe people, soaking up the claves, drums and songs that will stay with me forever.”

Coming from a Jamaican family, she was also raised on dub and roots reggae, played from her father’s sound system: “[He and my uncle] would play at all the family functions and heavy bass-lines would pulse through my veins.

“My parents, being born in the UK, loved their soul music and I distinctly remember time in the car with my mum listening to her favourite jazz records,” she told The Independent. “With my peers I was soaked in pop, hip-hop and Nineties R&B music. It was a real melting pot of musical influences for me growing up which all had their place and felt very natural in my world.”

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Witter-Johnson described her early experiences in classical music as “singular”, and revealed that she didn’t find a “clear role model” of the musician she would one day become until meeting the Belize-born British composer Errollyn Warren, one of her composition teachers at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London.

“She was [my] first example of a living Black female contemporary classical composer, and a singer-songwriter who composed and performed her own songs solo and with an ensemble,” Witter-Johnson said.

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Throughout her career, she has observed a “distinct lack of representation” of Black musicians and composers both on and off stage: “There’s a mix of unconscious bias and overt racism that often leads to unfair recruitment practices,” she said, citing a diversity report that found less than two per cent of orchestral musicians in the UK are from an ethnic global majority.

“With regard to Black composers, a study hasn’t been taken on representation but from first-hand experience, I can name only a handful in the UK that receive regular commissions and less of us have works programmed by major orchestras regularly,” she said.

“Being a composer, there is by nature less visibility of the diversity in that sphere and it is so much easier for inequality to go undetected and this is before looking into discrepancies in the ethnicity and gender pay-gap.

“There’s often a token push around October for Black History Month where a few Black composers have a spotlight, but this thread must extend beyond such narrow windows to become part of the fabric of our rich and diverse musical landscape and educational curricula.”

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She called for a report to be instigated into the landscape for Black composers in the UK classical music industry, citing an increase in performances of her own work both in Britain and abroad as an example of gradual progress.

“As a regular presenter on Magic Classical, I’m keen [to help] shift the landscape with regards to playing a greater number of works on air of Black composers (Florence Price, Joseph Chevalier de Saint George, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and many more),” she said.

“Errollyn Wallen being appointed Master of Music by King Charles III is a wonderful and major step in visibility for Black composers, [along with] widespread support of outstanding musicians like the Kanneh-Mason family, who have become household names and whose outstanding performances are regularly programmed worldwide across many of the major classical music festivals.

“Growing up, I never once saw a Black conductor and now for me it’s becoming more common to attend a concert lead by a Black or Asian conductor, people like Matthew Lynch, William Eddins and Leslie Suganandarajah who have all conducted my own music brings joy to my heart,” she added.