Singer-songwriter, pianist and cellist Ayanna Witter-Johnson has developed an increasingly fruitful collaboration with the LSO which has resulted in works such as Where Clouds Meet the Sea, DreamCity and FAIYA! A 12-track live album exploring stories relating to Witter-Johnson’s ancestral heritage, culture and identity, Ocean Floor sees her join forces with the LSO Percussion Ensemble.

A moving tribute to her mother which featured on Witter-Johnson’s 2019 album, Road Runner, the dazzling cello part of ‘Unconditionally’ employs a myriad of techniques including pizzicato, col legno, percussive tapping on the body of the instrument, and beautifully sustained bowed lines. There are gorgeous reimaginings of the Witter-Johnson/Ofei Sakyi tune, ‘Chariot’, and ‘Falling’ (also featured on Road Runner), a song of unrequited love co-written with Alex Webb.

In terms of its sound-world and circularity, Simcock’s memorable ‘Holding’ calls to mind Steve Swallow’s ‘Sweeping Up’ from Swallow’s 1975 duo album with Gary Burton, Hotel Hello. Witter-Johnson’s immensely powerful three-part ‘Ocean Floor Suite’ memorialises two moments of personal and historical significance – the loss of 130 enslaved people who were purposely thrown overboard from a British slave ship in the 18th century, and a tragic event she witnessed in Jamaica when a young man lost his life to the ocean.

The album comes full circle with ‘Forever’ – Witter-Johnson’s first collaboration with the percussion ensemble and a companion piece to ‘Unconditionally’ – which builds to a thrilling climactic point of textural intensification, before stripping back to just cello, voice and percussion at its dramatic close. An unmissable collection of storytelling magic.