Carnegie Hall

Only in his 20s, English cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason has already earned his spot on the world stage, having won the prestigious BBC Young Musician award in 2016 and played at the high-profile wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle in 2018, an event witnessed by two billion spectators. Nevertheless, he maintains he has always preferred the immediacy of the recital hall and the electricity generated within. “Recitals—with just piano or chamber music—is what I enjoy the most,” he once told The New York Times. “I like being able to work closely with just a few people on something. I prefer the intimacy of that to a concerto.”

This month on Carnegie Hall+, we showcase the rising star, whose taste for intimate, down-to-earth collaborations has famously led him to one of the closest partnerships a musician can have: playing alongside his own siblings. In addition to a top-drawer account of Elgar’s Cello Concerto from the 2019 London Proms at Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall+ subscribers now have access to a more recent presentation of Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of the Animals, featuring all seven Kanneh-Mason siblings on their respective instruments. Recorded in 2021, it’s their first joint venture as a septet; it’s also an extraordinary monument to the talents of the individual brothers and sisters, as well as to their cohesiveness as an ensemble.

Raised in the city of Nottingham by their father, an English Antiguan hotel manager, and their mother, a former lecturer at the University of Birmingham from Sierra Leone, the children all showed early aptitude for music. The third-born, Sheku started on the cello at age six after watching his older sister Braimah perform in an annual weekend course for local string players. He passed the Grade 8 cello exam at age nine with the highest marks in the nation and proceeded to join the junior division of the Royal Academy of Music, receiving lessons from noted cellist Ben Davies. In 2015, he was joined on the set of Britain’s Got Talent by the six eldest Kanneh-Masons—pianists Isata and Janeba; and violinists Braimah, Konya, and Aminata—where they made it to the semifinals with selections by Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky.

Multiple awards, international recitals, and recording contracts soon followed for each musician—including Sheku’s acclaimed debut for the Decca label, which featured his unplugged arrangement of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” that would be streamed almost 12 million times on Spotify, and Isata’s erudite freshman album of piano music by Clara Schumann, which debuted at the top of the UK Official Classical Artist Albums Chart in 2019.

Later that year, brother and sister joined forces on the stage of Carnegie Hall’s intimate Weill Recital Hall with an ambitious, wide-ranging program of music by Beethoven, Barber, Lutosławski, and Rachmaninoff. “Mr. Kanneh-Mason brought out the wistful subtext of the music … with rich, focused tone and elegant phrasing,” hailed The New York Times of their energetic take on Beethoven’s 12 Variations. “As the variations grew in intricacy and inventiveness, these impressive musicians responded with crisp stylishness.” The duo returned in May 2022 for another sold-out recital in Zankel Hall that drew raves from all in attendance.

Carnegie Hall+ audiences can experience Sheku’s elegant phrasing for themselves via his haunting account of the Elgar concerto, a cello repertory classic that shines a light on the musician’s shimmering tone, with conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla on the podium. The family’s ability to bring the necessary fluorescence and sparkle to The Carnival of the Animals—with narration provided by Oscar-winning actress Olivia Colman—without shirking the work’s gossamer depths underscores their empathy as collaborators.

Even though he is himself still young, Sheku has proven keen on sharing his gifts as a teacher and role model with other musicians early in their own careers, notably those of color. In 2018, it was reported that Kanneh-Mason had donated £3,000 to his former secondary school, enabling 10 other students to continue their cello lessons. Following a rehearsal with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in early 2020, Sheku reportedly visited an elementary school on the west side of the city to meet students in the ensemble’s OrchKids program, which provides after-school music programs for youth in Baltimore’s neighborhoods. And just this May, the Royal Academy of Music announced that he had been appointed as its first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring.

As he and his talented family pave the way for others, Sheku continues to bring joy and wonder to classical music while unfolding as an artist before our eyes. On Carnegie Hall+, subscribers can experience several of his early efforts, all displays of youthful fervor that are also undeniably timeless.

Photography by Jennifer Taylor and Stephanie Berger.