Sheku Kanneh-Mason
cello
About this Artist
Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether that’s performing for children in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues. Highlights of the 2024/25 season include the Konzerthaus Berlin as Artist in Residence, Lucerne Festival 2024 as Artiste Étoile, Czech Philharmonic in Prague and on tour with both Jakub Hrůša and Semyon Bychkov, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich with Paavo Järvi, WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne with Cristian Măcelaru, Orchestre National de Lyon with Leonard Slatkin, Sinfonia of London with John Wilson on tour in the UK, SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart with Christoph Eschenbach, Camerata Salzburg on tour, Pittsburgh Symphony with Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony with Stéphane Denève, The Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and City of Birmingham Symphony with Kazuki Yamada.
With his pianist sister, Isata, he makes his duo recital debut at Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium in a program featuring a newly commissioned piece by Natalie Klouda. The pair also appears on tour in Bordeaux, Rome, Cincinnati, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dublin, Munich, Berlin, Antwerp, Haarlem, the Rheingau Festival, and at London’s Wigmore Hall. Sheku also appears with duo partners guitarist Plínio Fernandes and jazz pianist Harry Baker.
Since his debut in 2017, Sheku has performed every summer at the BBC Proms, including as soloist at the 2023 Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop. In 2024, his family-friendly Proms appearances with the Fantasia Orchestra were designed to introduce orchestral classical music to a new generation of music lovers. Sheku also returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua & Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra.
A Decca Classics recording artist, Sheku appears on the May 2024 recording of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto alongside Nicola Benedetti, Benjamin Grosvenor, and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali. His 2022 album, Song, showcases his innately lyrical playing in a wide range of arrangements and collaborations. Sheku’s 2020 album Elgar reached No. 8 in the overall Official UK Album Chart, making him the first-ever cellist to reach the UK Top 10.
Sheku is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Hannah Roberts, and where in May 2022 he was appointed the first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. In 2024 he accepted the role of patron of UK Music Masters and remains an ambassador for both the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Future Talent. Sheku was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. After he won the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, Sheku’s performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle in 2018 was watched by 2 billion people worldwide. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700 on indefinite loan to him.