Biography
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.
Recent News
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...
Congratulations to Our 2021 Gramophone Award Shortlist Artists
The 2021 Gramophone Awards Shortlist is announced, and IMG Artists congratulates our nominees for their extraordinary performances and recordings. This year, the awards will be announced in an online ceremony presented by pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason and Gramophone...
The BBC Proms are Back!
The BBC Proms are back! The world’s biggest classical music festival features six weeks of live music from 30 July through 11 September. The 52 concerts will be performed in front of live audiences, and be broadcast on BBC TV and radio channels, BBC Sounds and...
Reviews
“[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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Technically superb and eloquent in his expressivity, he held the capacity audience spellbound with an interpretation of exceptional authority.”
“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”
“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.”
Gallery
Contact
Kathryn Enticott - Worldwide General Manager
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+44 (0) 20 7957 5834
Joseph Chadwick - Artist Manager
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+44 (0) 20 7957 5894