Kanneh-Mason grew up in Nottingham, England. He was born to Stuart Mason, a luxury hotel business manager from Antigua, and Dr. Kadiatu Kanneh, a former lecturer at the University of Birmingham, from Sierra Leone. He is the third of seven children and began learning the cello at the age of six with Sarah Huson-Whyte, having briefly played the violin. His love for the cello started when he saw his sister perform in 'Stringwise', an annual weekend course for young Nottingham string players, run by the local music charity Music for Everyone. He then switched from violin to cello and went on to take part in Music for Everyone's Stringwise courses, impressing their conductors with his astonishing ability to play everything from memory. At the age of nine, he passed the Grade 8 cello examination with the highest marks in the UK, and won the Marguerite Swan Memorial Prize. Also aged nine he won an ABRSM junior scholarship to join the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was tutored by Ben Davies. Kanneh-Mason received his non-specialist education as a pupil at the Trinity School, Nottingham, where he studied for A levels in Music, Maths and Physics.
Career
In 2015, he and his siblings were competitors on Britain's Got Talent as The Kanneh-Masons. He won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year contest in May 2016, later telling The Observer that appearing on Britain's Got Talent had been "a good experience for getting used to performing in front of lots of people, with cameras and interviews. When it came to BBC Young Musician there were fewer cameras so I wasn't fazed at all." Kanneh-Mason was a member of the Chineke! Orchestra, which was founded by Chi-chi Nwanoku for black and minority ethnic classical musicians; his sister Isata and brother Braimah are also members. In 2016, Kanneh-Mason told The Guardians Tom Service that: In November 2016, Kanneh-Mason was the subject of a BBC Four documentary entitled Young, Gifted and Classical: The Making of a Maestro. The following month, he was interviewed for BBC Radio 4's Front Row round-up of the year's major arts and entertainment award winners. In January 2018, it was reported that Kanneh-Mason had donated £3,000 to his former secondary school, enabling ten other pupils to continue their cello lessons. Sheku currently studies with Hannah Roberts at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Kanneh-Mason signed a deal for worldwide general management with London-based boutique agency, Enticott Music Management in June 2016, and went on to sign a major recording contract with classical music labelDecca Classics in November 2016. The record deal was signed on board a Nottingham City Transport bus which the local authority had named in his honour after Kanneh-Mason won the BBC Young Musician contest. The label announced that his first recording would feature the piece with which he won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year contest, Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No.1. Kanneh-Mason performed at the 2017 British Academy Film Awards held in London's Royal Albert Hall. In the same year, he was the soloist for the Chineke! orchestra's performance at the BBC Proms, playing Antonín Dvořák's Rondo in G Major. In February 2018, Sheku became the first artist ever to be re-invited to perform a second time at the British Academy Film Awards, playing "Evening of Roses" by Josef Hadar in an arrangement by Tom Hodge. For his second BAFTA performance, Sheku was joined on stage at the Royal Albert Hall by four of his siblings: Isata, Braimah, Konya, and Jeneba Kanneh-Mason. In early February 2018, the BBC reported that Kanneh-Mason's album Inspiration was "the biggest-selling British debut of the year to date", entering the UK Albums Chart at number 18, had become number one on the UK classical albums chart, and had achieved 2.5 million streams on Spotify. On 19 May 2018, Kanneh-Mason performed as part of the musical selections for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. On 11 November 2018, he performed in the presence of the same couple at the Royal Variety Performance which was broadcast on ITV.
Kanneh-Mason released his debut EP in February 2017 to coincide with his performance at the BAFTAs. The three tracks on the EP were recorded at the Abbey Road Studios.
Pablo Casals, "Song of the Birds", acc. Isata Kanneh-Mason
These tracks followed the viral success of his video of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", arranged by Tom Hodge. Sheku performed this arrangement at the BAFTAs in February 2017. Sheku has also recorded Gaspar Cassadó's "Requiebros". Sheku appears as a guest artist on the album Tecchler’s Cello: from Cambridge to Rome by cellist and fellow BBC Young Musician winner Guy Johnston, released in September 2017. On 26 January 2018 Sheku's first full-length album, Inspiration, was released by Decca. The recording includes the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 as well as shorter works by Shostakovich, Saint-Saens, Offenbach, Casals and Sheku's own arrangement of Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry". On 2 February 2018, the Official UK Charts Company announced that Inspiration's success had made Sheku "the UK's youngest cellist to break into the Official Albums Chart Top 20 with his debut album". As well as being the highest-charting BBC Young Musician on the UK's Official Albums Chart, Sheku is also the first BBC Young Musician to break into the albums Top 40 with their debut record. Sheku's second album Elgar was released by Decca Classics on 10 January 2020. It features a recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. The album also includes arrangements of traditional melodies, along with works by Bloch, Bridge, Elgar, Fauré, and Julius Klengel.
