Biography
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Born
4 April 1999 (age 25)
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Born In
Nottingham, England, United Kingdom
Sheku Kanneh-Mason MBE (born 4 April 1999) is a British cellist who won the 2016 BBC Young Musician award. He was the first Black musician to win the competition since its launch in 1978. He played at the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle on 19 May 2018 under the direction of Christopher Warren-Green. As of 2021, Kanneh-Mason plays a Matteo Goffriller cello which was made in 1700.
Kanneh-Mason grew up in Nottingham, England. He was born to Stuart Mason, from London, a luxury hotel business manager of Antiguan descent, and Dr. Kadiatu Kanneh, from Sierra Leone, a former lecturer at the University of Birmingham and author of the 2020 book House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons.
He is the third of seven children and began learning the cello at the age of six with Sarah Huson-Whyte, having briefly played the violin. His love for the cello started when he saw his sister perform in 'Stringwise', an annual weekend course for young Nottingham string players, run by the local music charity Music for Everyone. He then switched from violin to cello and went on to take part in Music for Everyone's Stringwise courses, impressing their conductors with his ability to play everything from memory. At the age of nine, he passed the Grade 8 cello examination with the highest marks in the UK, and won the Marguerite Swan Memorial Prize. Also aged nine he won an ABRSM junior scholarship to join the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was tutored by Ben Davies.
Kanneh-Mason received his non-specialist education as a pupil at the Trinity School, Nottingham, where he studied for A levels in Music, Maths and Physics. As of 2018, Sheku Kanneh-Mason is a student of Hannah Roberts at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Kanneh-Mason has cited cellists Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovich as his "musical heroes", alongside Bob Marley.
In 2015, he and his siblings were competitors on Britain's Got Talent as The Kanneh-Masons. He won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year contest in May 2016, later telling The Observer that appearing on Britain's Got Talent had been "a good experience for getting used to performing in front of lots of people, with cameras and interviews. When it came to BBC Young Musician there were fewer cameras so I wasn't fazed at all."
On 26 January 2018 Sheku's first full-length album, Inspiration, was released by Decca. The recording includes the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 (accompanied by the CBSO conducted by Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla) as well as shorter works by Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Offenbach, Casals and Sheku's own arrangement of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry". On 2 February 2018, the Official UK Charts Company announced that Inspiration's success had made Sheku "the UK's youngest cellist to break into the Official Albums Chart Top 20 with his debut album" (the previous holder of the accolade being cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, who was 39 when he released Lloyd Webber Plays Lloyd Webber in 1990). As well as being the highest-charting BBC Young Musician on the UK's Official Albums Chart, Sheku is also the first BBC Young Musician to break into the albums Top 40 with their debut record.
Sheku's second album Elgar was released by Decca Classics on 10 January 2020. It features a recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. The album also includes arrangements of traditional melodies, along with works by Bloch, Bridge, Elgar, Fauré, and Julius Klengel.
Awards:
Kanneh-Mason was the winner of the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition, following which his home town of Nottingham named a bus in his honour. In that year he also won the Royal Philharmonic Society Young Instrumentalist Duet Prize.
In June 2017, he won the Classical category of the South Bank Sky Arts Award The Times Breakthrough prize.
In June 2018, he won both the Male Artist of the Year and the Critics' Choice Award at the Classic BRIT Awards.
Kanneh-Mason was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to music.
In March 2020, Kanneh-Mason won the public vote for Best Classical Artist at the Global Awards.
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