Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Cello
Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s career and performances span the globe. Whether performing for children in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues, his mission is to make music accessible to all. After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, his performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle in 2018 was watched by two billion people worldwide.
Highlights of the 2023–24 season include the Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony and appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orquesta Nacional de España, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Oslo Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic on tour in Germany, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, and Cincinnati Symphony. He makes his solo debut with the San Francisco Symphony with these performances, having previously appeared twice on the Great Performers Series, first in recital with his sister, Isata, and then on tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony and Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.
This season with Isata, he appears in recital in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, in addition to a European recital tour. He also performs a series of duo recitals with guitarist Plínio Fernandes, continues his solo cello recital tour in the United States and Canada, and returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra.
Mr. Kanneh-Mason is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music, where he studied with Hannah Roberts, and in 2022 was appointed as the Academy’s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. He is an ambassador for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Future Talent, and Music Masters, and was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700, which is on indefinite loan to him, and is a Decca Classics recording artist.