About
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether that’s performing for children in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues.
In November 2025, Sheku gave the world première of Edmund Finnis’s Cello Concerto, which was written for him, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Roberto Gonzalez Monjas. He gives further performances of this work with the Dresden Philharmonic and Melbourne Symphony orchestras, and the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Antonio Pappano, in the 26/27 season. He made his much-anticipated debut in August 2026 with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Simone Young at the Sydney Opera House playing the Elgar Cello Concerto, for which he received outstanding reviews. Exactly 10 years since he won the BBC Young Musician, he returns to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall in September 2026 with his competition peers Jess Gillam and Benjamin Goldscheider where they perform a newly commissioned work by Gwilym Simcock, a Triple Concerto, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo. Further performances are scheduled in Sofia, Birmingham, and Antwerp.
Sheku continues to work with some of the most exciting orchestras and conductors; highlights of the 26/27 season include performances with Rotterdam Philharmonic and Bar Avni, Danish National Symphony with Leonidas Kavakos, Polish National Radio Symphony and Marin Alsop, Pittsburgh Symphony and Manfred Honeck, Toronto Symphony and Gustavo Gimeno, and Sinfonia of London and John Wilson.
He returns to the Amsterdam Cello Biennale with the Residentie Orkest and Jonathan Bloxham in November 2026 and then in December 2026, performs Saint-Saëns’ first Cello Concerto with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Semyon Bychkov. As part of the same visit, Sheku and musicians of the orchestra play the first concert adaptation of his own delightful book for young children “Little Sheku and the Animal Orchestra”. In May 2027, Sheku embarks upon a European and North American duo tour with celebrated pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, with whom he recorded his 2024 album of the Beethoven Triple Concerto.
In 2027 Sheku returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra and before then is honoured to perform for the Commonwealth Heads of Government gala evening in November 2026, also in Antigua.
A Decca Classics recording artist, Sheku released Shostakovich & Britten in May 2025, featuring Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 2, performed with John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London, alongside the cello sonatas of Shostakovich and Britten, which he recorded with Isata Kanneh-Mason. September 2025 saw the release of the second Kanneh-Mason family album, River of Music, also on Decca Classics. Sheku’s 2022 album, Song, showcased his innately lyrical playing in a wide range of arrangements and collaborations, and his 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. He will release his ninth album on Decca Classics later in 2026.
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. In 2024 he accepted the role as patron of UK Music Masters and remains an ambassador for both Breakthrough T1D and Future Talent. Sheku was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. After winning the BBC Young Musician 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. He is the author of two books, both published by Penguin Random House in 2025, a memoir entitled “The Power of Music” and the aforementioned “Little Sheku and the Animal Orchestra”. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700 which is on indefinite loan to him.