Sheku Kanneh-Mason

 

Sheku Kanneh-Mason

I am now not entirely sure when I first heard of Sheku; perhaps it was the programme in 2018 on the story of the entire Kanneh-Mason family from Nottingham. The fact that Nottingham has always been ‘my town’ even though I was born fourteen miles away in the much more prosaic Mansfield, might have been the aural spur to listen originally to the Kanneh-Mason story. I subsequently bought Sheku’s first C.D. ‘Inspiration’, (2018) and immediately loved the sublime playing of his cello. Yesterday, I heard, by delighted chance, the latest This Cultural Life on Radio 4 when John Wilson interviewed Sheku about his musical and personal life. One answer illuminated the extraordinary effects national success in one area, can have on a person’s life. After his televised performance at Harry and Megan’s wedding, he said how much his fame, and requests for concerts, seemed to have increased and his latest appearance in the Last Night of the BBC Proms, televised around the world from London’s Albert Hall, can only have served to increase his fame.

Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason;
cellist and pianist, respectively.

His parents are Stuart Mason, 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 was born in April 1999, the third of seven siblings in an intensely musical family with each child expected to learn to play a classical instrument. The parents were very musical though not professionals and they worked hard and creatively to ensure their children could develop both artistically and personally. He was taken every week for cello lesssons at the Royal Academy's Saturday School and his Nottingham state school "was full of music" according to Sheku, with opportunities to learn to play bass guitar and trumpet As Dr. Kanneh writes in her book, “Playing music was an organic part of family life, rooted in the routine of every day. We didn’t decide at the beginning that our seven children would become musicians and pursue professional music careers.”

Sheku was already well-known as Young Musician of 2016, when he was chosen to play his cello at the wedding of Prince Harry and Megan Markle in 2018. Still a teenager, his faultless musicianship impressed the world! He played Gabriel Faure’s Après Un Reve; Maria Theresa von Paradis’ Sicilienne and Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria. He became the first black person to win the BBC Young Musician of the Year [an annual event since 1973] in 2016 when he gave a passionate performance of Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto. This triumph was closely followed by a documentary about his extraordinary musical family and demands arrived, nationwide for him, and increasingly, his pianist sister, Isata, to perform in concerts.  He made several recordings including Carnival with his family and Muse, with sister Isata. In 2018 his Classical No. 1 solo album, Inspiration was followed in 2020 by Elgar which reached No.8 in the Official UK Album Chart, making him the first cellist in the history of the UK Charts to break into the Top Ten. His newest recording in 2023, Song, extends his repertoire far and wide, from Bach, Mendelssohn, Beethoven to folk, jazz and pop. Many pieces have arrangements by the cellist himself, and every track reflects Kanneh-Mason’s joy in the instrument he began playing when he was six. One piece, Myfanwy calling up his Welsh grandmother, is played on three cellos with all three played by him with the sounds, over-dubbed. In his interview with John Wilson [This Cultural Life] Sheku says how spontaneous and creative he was able to be in Song, “recording in different ways and picking things which meant a lot to me. It’s very much like a portrait of who I am up to now while also looking forward to what I’m interested in exploring further.”

He appeared on Last Night of the Proms from 2017 to 2024 but when he was asked on Desert Island Discs in 2024, if Rule Britannia should appear in the finale, he promptly answered, 'No!' In his debut book, 'The Power of Music" he recounts his horror at the unexpected huge reaction to his answer. "My truthful and understated remark ... was greeted with an uproarious wave of censure and horror against me in the media, and an unguarded uprising of racist bile on social media."  He describes the song as 'deeply troubling ....... born as it was in Britain's burgeouning slave trade and at the height of its thundering imperialism.'. He immediately received widespread support, particularly from other musicians and found solace, as ever, in playing his beloved cello.  A young British composer, Edmund Finnis, wrote five preludes for Kanneh-Mason and in an interview, Sheku pays tribute to Finnis. “He is very interested in subtle and detailed things in the sound which is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about and exploring. The collaboration works well because of that. He’s a very sensitive musician and sensitive to the aspects of music that I care about like harmony and melody, sound and subtlety and the vocal qualities of the cello.”

Sheku in 2021, with his prize
'Ex-Goritzki' cello, 1700

As one of the most exciting musicians of his generation, Sheku Kanneh-Mason has been blessed by the foresight and generosity of donors. He was given his priceless, perfect cello, the outstanding ‘Ex-Goritzki’ by Matteo Goffriller, made in Venice in 1700, thanks to a syndicate of wealthy sponsors introduced through the Florian Leonhardt Fellowship, for his sole use for the rest of his life. This wonderful gift was a supremely uplifting event for him in 2021, both for Sheku and his audiences and the music continues.