On Thursday, 25 June 2026, in the first-ever live performance of The Windrush Suite and Echo in the Bones, Ivor Novello Award–winning composer, musical director, and multi-hyphenate artist Renell Shaw converted Hall One at Kings Place in London into the quintessential West Indian front room—a space that people have considered a sanctuary in Black British homes.
Entering the concert hall
We found our seats to the sound of reggae reverberating around the concert hall walls. On what would have been the mantelpiece, the screen projected black-and-white images of men slapping dominoes against a wooden table. We could almost hear them roar with laughter, realising they picked up sumt’n sweet. In other photographs offered by Jim Glover, women whipped up delights in the kitchen alongside friends. Although these projected images were static, the subjects held each other so tenderly my imagination could trace their movements.
Transported to familiar times gone by, our eyes wandered the room until Renell Shaw took to the stage, placing his grandfather’s trumpet beside the decks to share the precious moment. The locs neatly tied atop his head showed he was ready for the serious business of “commemorating those who came before, those who came after and uplifting the people”.
I felt myself make a promise to the people on stage.
Likely on account of their otherworldly musical talents, Renell referred to his band as “avengers”. Each artist bounced and rocked their way to their positions to Renell’s roll call with Dennis Brown’s “The Promised Land” as the backdrop. At that moment, I felt myself make a promise to the people on stage: I would listen as earnestly as this production had been put together.
This special performance of The Windrush Suite and Echo in the Bones formed part of Renell Shaw’s year-long residency at Kings Place ahead of the final suite in the trilogy: Remember Us Tomorrow on 9 October 2026.
From an Ivor Novello award-winning record to the stage at Kings Place
In 2020, General Manager of Vortex Jazz Club, Kathianne Hingwan, commissioned Renell Shaw to compose and perform The Windrush Suite at the renowned venue in London. However, the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns meant that this was no longer possible. Instead, it debuted as a streamed performance on Windrush Day. Released by Major Toms, the independent record label founded by Rudimental, the opening record, “The Vision They Had,” went on to win an Ivor Novello award. That’s to say, the production we saw at Kings Place was more than five years in the making, with Renell gifting his audience a true labour of love.
On the night, the band consisted of the highest calibre of artists:
- Renell Shaw | Musical director, conductor, vocalist
- Orphy Robinson MBE | Marimba
- Ayanna Witter-Johnson | Cello and vocalist
- Jean Toussaint | Tenor saxophone
- Nathaniel Cross | Trombone
- Mark Crown | Trumpet
- Zoe Alexandria | Piano
- Romarna Campbell | Drums
- Charlie Laffer | Guitar
- Mutale Chashi | Bass
- Afronaut Zu | Vocalist and percussion
- Rochelle Rose | Vocalist
- Nandi | Vocalist
After courteously checking in with each artist, conductor Renell Shaw started the show with “The Vision They Had”. My ears tuned into the archive recording before noticing the soft piano keys accompanying the wisdom-bearing Caribbean elder’s voice.
Getting swept up in close-to-home emotions with The Windrush Suite
As the ensemble reached its first crescendo, the hairs on my arms tingled; heart tangled with my own grief of losing my grandmother, who too arrived in England by boat in the 60s. Memories of her high-pitched laugh rose and fell along with Afronaut Zu’s rhythmical quinto and tumba. The gentle notes that rang each time Orphy Robinson MBE struck the marimba soothed my tears before they could tumble. Although I sat perfectly still, something within moved.
Breaking the enchantment with a loaded question, Renell asked the crowd if they knew what “Bacchanal” meant. He responded to the crowd’s murmurs with “Yuh ah guh learn today”. “Bacchanal” carries the vibrancy of Caribbean fetes along with the rich tone of carnival’s rebellious history.
The high-energy drum patterns led by Romarna Campbell made it hard for people to remain seated—heads bopping, toes tapping in every direction. The temperature rose so high that bassist Mutale Chashi needed to relieve the heat with a wax-print hand fan. “Bacchanal” closed with an important reminder for all those taking to the streets for Notting Hill Carnival’s upcoming 60th anniversary: “Know what you doing before you do”.
the crispness of Ayanna’s cello wove the thread between languages, peoples, and histories that make up what it means to be Black in Britain today.
When introducing the track as the conductor and MC, Renell Shaw talked in dub, which spoke to the underground sound system culture that took form in Britain following the arrival of pioneering Jamaican soundmen. In “Out of Many”, the crispness of Ayanna’s cello wove the thread between languages, peoples, and histories that make up what it means to be Black in Britain today. More precisely, Renell’s lyrics call for a Pan-African vision, one that unapologetically seeks equality for all descendants of the African continent.
Where “Purgatory” surfaced the to-and-fro passage of the Windrush generation, and what it meant to fight against institutions that deemed their children unintelligent, “Too Loud, Too Proud” offered a distinct transition after the interval, one that wouldn’t tolerate disrespect, firmly putting its foot down with the defiant drumbeat. Unflinching, Afronaut Zu sang: “No surrender, no retreat, continue rising”. If “Too Loud, Too Proud” were a question, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s rhetorical, with Charlie Laffer’s bold guitar solo as the exclamation point.
Bridging the gap between then and now through Echo in the Bones
With the second suite, Echo in the Bones, Renell and his band found another notch of energy. As his conducting grew more emphatic on stage, more layers of the suite’s rich orchestration unfolded into full-bodied jazz.
“With the tenacity and the persistence of our grandparents, their fire is like a blue flame.”
As Renell told WorlMag: “Echo in the Bones has a different fire [from The Windrush Suite]… with the tenacity and the persistence of our grandparents, their fire is like a blue flame. It was focused, and it cut through. It set itself here through community and resilience and things like pardner, and all things to make sure they could… buy a house, make a likkle change, and eventually go back home—that was their focus,” said Renell.
“Whereas with our parents’ generation, the fire is more yellow, it’s a bit more wild. You go near it, and it’s lashing out at you because they had to be like that to be left alone. That’s where Echo in the Bones is from, and that’s why it sounds so different from The Windrush Suite,” he added.
In “Freedom?”, the brass section formed harmonies that bellowed the power of generations coming together to make a stand. Using poetic license in his songwriting, Renell asked questions that demanded answers:
Sell me my freedom? / How you gone sell me my freedom like rah — “Freedom?” from Echo in the Bones.
Before presenting “Echo of a Requiem,” Renell shared that he doesn’t believe in death as an end but a transition. This composition brought tears to my eyes once more. The build-up felt like a visceral call to the ancestors. It culminated in an ethereal operatic cry from Rochelle Rose. She held every note with a delicacy that Black people in Britain too often aren’t granted. Her voice stirred me with shudders.
Reaching the grand finale
Cello embraced, Ayanna strummed her way through the clusters of standing ovations to bring her solo to the fore. Displaying his own exceptional dexterity on “This Mind Knows,” Orphy Robinson danced across the marimba in a way I didn’t even know was possible.
After the impossible sound of Jean Toussaint’s tenor sax, the to-and-fro conversations between trumpet and trombone, and each artist’s solo offering, the band closed their electric performance with “Mad Ting”.
“But the seeds of the land have taught man how to grow strange fruit from this stormy weather” — “Mad Ting” from Echo in the Bones.
The lyrics in this explosive and unyielding record neatly summarised the resilience Black people have shown while residing in Britain, bridging the final gap between past, present, and future generations.
Renell Shaw returns to Kings Place with Remember Us Tomorrow on 9 October 2026. Tickets are on sale now.
