Mar 17
Cello
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. Highlights of the 25/26 season include the prestigious position as Arist in Residence at the New York Philharmonic, touring with the London Philharmonic, and appearances with the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestra of Santa Cecilia Rome, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Auckland Philharmonia, and the Baltimore, Vienna, and Sydney symphony orchestras.
Sheku will perform Beethoven’s Triple Concerto with his pianist sister, Isata, and violinist Tai Murray and the Chineke! Orchestra on tour in Europe, and with Isata and their brother, Braimah, as violinist on a North American tour in Detroit, Ottawa, Naples (Florida), and Seattle. Sheku also gives the world première of Edmund Finnis’s Cello Concerto, which was written for him, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Roberto Gonzalez Monjas, with further performances of the work with the Dresden Philharmonic, Melbourne Symphony, and London Symphony orchestras.
Sheku continues his collaboration with Isata for a European duo recital tour in February, taking in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Geneva, Turin, Amsterdam, and London’s Wigmore Hall, where later in the 25/26 season Sheku and Isata return to play chamber music with two more of their siblings, Braimah and Jeneba. In North America, the duo will resume their recital tour including Boston, Washington D.C., Cleveland, and New York’s Lincoln Center. Sheku also returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra.
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 sees 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.
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 plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700 which is on indefinite loan to him.
Piano
Pianist Isata offers eclectic and interesting recital programmes with repertoire encompassing Haydn and Mozart, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Chopin and Brahms to Gershwin and beyond. In concerto, she is equally at home in Felix Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann as in Prokofiev and Dohnányi.
Isata is in high demand from concert halls and orchestras worldwide. Following her phenomenally successful concerto debut at the BBC Proms in 2023, she was invited to open the festival in July 2024 with the BBC Symphony and conductor Elim Chan, a performance which resulted in stellar reviews in the mainstream press. Isata appears as concerto soloist with the European Union Youth Orchestra and Iván Fischer in summer 2024 performing Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Tune at Carnegie Hall, New York, the Grafenegg Festival, and Bolzano Festival Bozen.
Highlights of the 2024/25 season include Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto at the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie’s FREISPIEL festival and at the Ulster Orchestra’s season opening concert; and Prokofiev’s Third Concerto with the Chineke! Orchestra on tour at Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Konzerthaus Berlin, Brussels’s BOZAR and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Solo recital appearances include the Lucerne Festival, Piano aux Jacobins Toulouse, the Schumann-Haus Düsseldorf, PHIL Haarlem, and on tour across the USA. In concerto performance, Isata appears with the London, Bergen, Bremen, and Duisburg philharmonics, the North Carolina Symphony, and on tour with the Staatskapelle Weimar, and the Residentie Orkest.
Isata continues her longstanding duo collaboration with her cellist brother, Sheku, with performances in the UK and on tour across Europe, the USA, and Canada. She will also give performances with bass-baritone Gerald Finley in the Czech Republic and Germany.
In 2023/24, Isata gave performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, NCPA Orchestra Beijing, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on tour in the USA and Germany, Cleveland Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, and Stockholm Philharmonic among others. She appeared in solo recital at the Beethoven Bonn and Rheingau festivals, and venues around the globe such as London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall and the Konzerthaus Dortmund.
Isata is a Decca Classics artist and has recorded four solo albums for the label – Romance (2019), Summertime (2021), Childhood Tales (2023), and Mendelssohn (2024). Her latest release presents music from two Mendelssohn siblings, including the glittering First Piano Concerto by Felix and the long-lost ‘Easter Sonata’ by his exceptionally talented but overlooked elder sister Fanny, alongside transcriptions of some of Felix’s most famous music by Rachmaninoff and Liszt.
Isata has received many awards, including the coveted Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and an Opus Klassik award for best young artist. She also enjoys composing and arranging and released two albums of her favourite works for intermediate and advanced piano students through ABRSM Publishing in 2023.
The musical talent that runs in the Kanneh-Mason family is already the stuff of legend, and this recital by cellist Sheku and pianist Isata shows off the siblings’ extraordinary musicianship in an era-spanning program. Memorable works by two brilliant but historically unsung women composers — Nadia Boulanger and Rebecca Clarke — feature prominently alongside the colorful First Cello Sonata of Mendelssohn and Robert Schumann’s strikingly original Five Pieces in Folk Style.
Generous support for the 2025/2026 Recital Series provided by the Art of Beauty Company, Inc.
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