SHEKU
KANNEH-
MASON
CELLO
MANAGED IN ASSOCIATION WITH
ENTICOTT MUSIC MANAGEMENT
SHEKU KANNEH-MASON
CELLO
MANAGED IN ASSOCIATION WITH
ENTICOTT MUSIC MANAGEMENT
ABOUT
Cellist 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, Sheku’s mission is to make music accessible to all. After winning the BBC Young Music competition in 2016, Sheku’s 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 23/24 season include the Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony and Marin Alsop, performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Orchestre de Paris, Orquesta Nacional de España, National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland, Oslo Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Gävle Symphony, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Philharmonic on tour in Germany, Cincinnati Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and Munich Philharmonic. With his sister, Isata, he appears in recital in Japan, Singapore, and South Korea in addition to an extensive European recital tour. Sheku will also perform a series of duo recitals with guitarist Plínio Fernandes as well as continuing his solo cello recital tour in the USA and Canada. He returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra. Since his debut in 2017, Sheku has performed every summer at the BBC Proms, including in 2020 when he gave a breath-taking recital performance with his sister Isata, to an empty auditorium due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
A Decca Classics recording artist, his 2022 album, Song, showcases his innately lyrical playing in a wide and varied 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. Sheet music collections of his performance repertoire along with his own arrangements and compositions are published by Faber.
Sheku is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Hannah Roberts and in May 2022 he 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. Sheku 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.
RECENT PRAISE
THE ARTS DESK
DAVID NICE
[Kanneh-Mason’s] own cadenzas have compelling musical logic, his pianissimos were magical, his encore arrangement of a Jewish folksong spellbinding; … you aren’t ever going to hear this Haydn concerto more engagingly performed.
THE GUARDIAN
RIAN EVANS
Many of the enthusiastic audience had clearly come to see last year’s BBC Young Musician winner, the cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason. They were rewarded with a stylish performance as the soloist in Haydn’s Cello Concerto in C (Hob VIIb/1). In the central adagio, Kanneh-Mason balanced expressive singing tone with careful, instinctive, dynamic shading. He took the allegro molto at fearless, breakneck speed, the passage work impressively controlled. A solo encore was further testimony to his prodigious gift, and his arrangement of a traditional Jewish song was plangent and subtly elaborated.
THE TIMES
REBECCA FRANKS
Kanneh-Mason is a player who makes you tune in to every nuance of articulation, every subtle shading, every eloquent turn of phrase. Here, joined for this same concerto by his fiercely talented peers in the National Youth Orchestra, he showed us why he won the competition. He performed with urgency and bite, impeccable technique and, in the second movement, exquisite line as the cello sang its sotto voce hymn to the night.
THE GUARDIAN
GEORGE HALL
Technically superb and eloquent in his expressivity, he held the capacity audience spellbound with an interpretation of exceptional authority.
THE TELEGRAPH
JOHN ALLISON
Last year’s BBC Young Musician winner, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, returned to the scene of his victory with the same work, the Russian composer’s First Cello Concerto. Digging in with gripping attack yet also plenty of nuance, he showed what a remarkable musician he already is, bringing other-worldly tone to the haunting slow movement and displaying mature musicianship in his handling of the extended cadenza.
CLASSICAL SOURCE
COLIN CLARKE
Kanneh-Mason gave an astonishingly assured performance. The strength of Kanneh-Mason’s approach was that it was so nuanced; this, plus his technical command, led to a memorable account.
NEWS
Jakub Hrůša, Joana Carneiro and Sheku Kanneh-Mason Perform at the 2024 Edinburgh International Festival
The Edinburgh International Festival has unveiled its 2024 line-up. On the 03 August 2024, Joana Carneiro leads the Orquesta La Pasión and Musicians from the RSNO in the Scottish premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s La Pasión Según San Marcos. They are joined by the Schola Cantorum of Venezuela, the National Youth
The 2023 BBC Proms are Announced!
The 2023 BBC Proms, “the world’s greatest classical music festival”, return with 71 concerts throughout the UK from 14 July through The Last Night of the Proms celebration, featuring cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, on 9 September. Conductors Semyon Bychkov, Vladimir Jurowski, Jaime Martín and Vasily Petrenko; pianists Kirill Gerstein and Isata
Leif Ove Andsnes, Mitsuko Uchida, Semyon Bychkov and Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason Are Shortlisted in Limelight’s 2022 Recording of the Year
Enticott Music Management and IMG Artists celebrate having six artists feature in the Limelight 2022 Recording of the Year shortlist. Twenty-five recordings have been nominated and divided into five categories: Orchestral, Chamber, Instrumental, Vocal and Opera. Semyon Bychkov is nominated in the Orchestral category for Mahler: Symphony No 4. The album, featuring Chen Reiss and
Watch Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s Debut with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra – Livestream 18 February
Sheku Kanneh-Mason will make his Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra debut on Thursday, 18 February. He will perform Dvořák’s passionate Cello Concerto, conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann. The concert, which also features Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5, will be streamed live on Konserthuset Play. The winner of the 2016 BBC Young Musician competition, Sheku Kanneh-Mason is already in great
Jonathon Heyward and Sheku Kanneh-Mason Nominated for 2020 RPS Awards
Jonathon Heyward and Sheku Kanneh-Mason have been honoured with nominations for the 2020 RPS Awards. Heyward is on the shortlist for Conductor of the Year, and cellist Kanneh-Mason, who is managed in association with Enticott Music Management, is nominated for Young Artist of the Year. The winners of this prestigious honour will be announced on
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