Ayanna Witter-Johnson: The Composers’ Fund
Commission by Solem Quartet for Part IV, “Experiments”, of their Beethoven Bartok Now series (March 2022), Singer/Cellist/Composer Ayanna Witter-Johnson will create a 20 minute piece responding to Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Bartok’s 3rd String Quartet, both ground-breaking avant-garde works of their era. Her piece will establish a thread between Beethoven, Bartok and herself, while taking inspiration from the rebellious and pioneering approaches they brought to their own works.
An integral part of the compositional process will involve a research and development period. Spending time collaborating with the Solem Quartet including observing rehearsals, getting to know the performers and exploring the repertoire which the commissioned work will respond to. This will be her first large-scale string quartet, and the time spent working with the Solem Quartet will present an exciting chance to truly “experiment” compositionally, as the concert title invites, and collaborate with these four musicians.
Graduating with a First from both Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and the Manhattan School of Music, Ayanna was a participant in the London Symphony Orchestra’s Panufnik Young Composers Scheme and became an Emerging Artist in Residence at London’s Southbank Centre. A featured artist with Courtney Pine’s Afropeans: Jazz Warriors and the only non-American to win Amateur Night Live at the legendary Apollo Theatre in Harlem, NYC, she has composed for the London Symphony Orchestra, Guërzenich Orchester, collaborated and toured with Anoushka Shankar, recorded with Nitin Sawhney, Akala, released 3 EPs and released her debut album ‘Road Runner’ on her own label.