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Sheku Kanneh-Mason

cello

About this Artist

Cellist 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 2025/26 season include the prestigious position as Artist in Residence at the New York Philharmonic, touring with the London Philharmonic, and appearances with the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Rome, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Auckland Philharmonia, and the Baltimore, Vienna, and Sydney symphony orchestras.

Kanneh-Mason will perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with his pianist sister, Isata, and violinist Tai Murray and the Chineke! Orchestra on tour in Europe, and with Isata and their brother, Braimah (violin), on a North American tour in Detroit, Ottawa, Naples (FL), and Seattle. Following the world premiere of Edmund Finnis’ Cello Concerto, which was written for him, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Roberto González-Monjas, he will perform the work with the Dresden Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony, and London Symphony orchestras.

Kanneh-Mason continues his collaboration with Isata for a European duo recital tour in February, taking place in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Geneva, Turin, Amsterdam, and London’s Wigmore Hall, where later in the 2025/26 season the pair return to play chamber music with two of their siblings, Braimah and Jeneba (piano). In North America, the duo will resume their recital tour in Boston, Washington, and Cleveland, and at New York’s Lincoln Center. Kanneh-Mason also returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra.

A Decca Classics recording artist, Kanneh-Mason released Shostakovich & Britten in May 2025, featuring Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, performed with John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London, alongside the cello sonatas of Shostakovich and Britten, which he recorded with Isata Kanneh-Mason. September 2025 saw the release of the second Kanneh-Mason family album, River of Music, also on Decca Classics. Kanneh-Mason’s 2022 album, Song, showcased his innately lyrical playing in a wide range of arrangements and collaborations, and his 2020 album, Elgar, reached No. 8 in the overall Official UK Album Chart, making him the first cellist ever to reach the UK Top 10. Sheet music collections of his performance repertoire along with his own arrangements and compositions are published by Faber.

Kanneh-Mason is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Hannah Roberts and in May 2022 was appointed the first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. In 2024 he accepted the role as patron of UK Music Masters and remains an ambassador for both Breakthrough T1D and Future Talent. Kanneh-Mason 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, Kanneh-Mason’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.