Sheku Kanneh-Mason on discovering his mother’s homeland — and the music he’s ‘obsessed’ with

“It was an important trip, which we had been thinking about for a long time,” says Sheku Kanneh-Mason, thinking back to his family visit to Sierra Leone in January. “We didn’t take our instruments, but there is a music academy in the capital, Freetown, and they gave a beautiful performance for us of traditional music and Afrobeat.”

This was the first time that Sheku and his six siblings had been to the country where their mother was born. When Sheku won the BBC Young Musician award in 2016, the news did not go unnoticed in Sierra Leone and he has clearly become a celebrity there since. This is hardly surprising after playing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in front of a television audience estimated at two billion, not to mention multiple TV documentaries, the Last Night of the Proms in 2023 and a busy diary of concerts from Berlin to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh to Lucerne.

“We went to my mum’s village and arrived to a welcome of song and dance, which was very beautiful,” says Kanneh-Mason. “The group of musicians who were playing asked if I would like to try their instruments. I was playing a balangi, a kind of African marimba with wooden keys and a soft, speaking sound. The people communicate in such a strong and warm way and making music together is part of that, where family and community are so important.”

It is a relief to learn that the Kanneh-Mason family can still find a space in their communal diaries for a family trip. It is not only Sheku, 26, who is busy as a musician. His six siblings — Isata, Braimah, Konya, Jeneba, Aminata and Mariatu, aged 28 to 15 — all make music as a family and pianists Isata and Jeneba have followed their brother professionally in making recordings for major companies.

After his BBC Young Musician win and the razzmatazz of the royal wedding, it must have been difficult for Kanneh-Mason to hold back the offers. Given the huge amount of media interest he has spawned, he remains remarkably laid back, casually chatty. No wonder people like to work with him.

Coming up next is his latest recording for Decca Records. Kanneh-Mason recorded Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1 in 2018 after his winning performance of the work at BBC Young Musician and now he has added the composer’s Second Cello Concerto, conducted by John Wilson with his crack ensemble, the Sinfonia of London.

“I got into Shostakovich’s music as a teenager,” says Kanneh-Mason. “I started listening to his string quartets, the symphonies, the concertos, and was captivated by learning the pieces. There are just the two concertos for cello, written for [legendary Russian cellist] Mstislav Rostropovich, but they stretch the instrument to far places. Learning the first concerto meant I needed to develop my technique a lot, but because I loved the piece so much, I was determined.”

The two concertos are very different, but the more lyrical Second is easier to pair with other works. Its sound-world — “weird and wonderful and patient and soulful” in Kanneh-Mason’s description — fits well on the recording with the Cello Sonatas of Britten and Shostakovich, for which he is accompanied by his older sister Isata.

The Britten sonata was composed for Rostropovich, too, and Kanneh-Mason is pleased that the two sonatas were recorded at the Maltings, Snape, where Rostropovich and Britten worked together. “It was so nice that Isata and I could perform them in recital there before recording them the next day. The character of the music works so well in that acoustic.”

Moving into a new area, he has two books due for publication in May. The first is The Power of Music, in which he tells his own story and celebrates the music that means most to him, its power to transform our mental and physical health and to effect social change. The other is a children’s book, Little Sheku and the Animal Orchestra, a music-filled adventure to a dragon’s cave. He is following in the footsteps of his mother Kadiatu — a former university lecturer — whose House of Music, telling the family’s story, is being followed by a new book scheduled for May, To Be Young, Gifted and Black.

Also recently announced is a major forthcoming engagement as Mary and James G Wallach artist-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic next season. Two concerts beckon: the first will feature Bloch’s Schelomo, the final work of the composer’s Jewish cycle in which he imagined the solo cellist as the incarnation of King Solomon (Kanneh-Mason says it is “at times extreme, with lonely and delicate bits for the cello, and I am obsessed with it”). The other will have Elgar’s Cello Concerto. He will also perform a recital with Isata as part of the orchestra’s “Artist Spotlight” series.

Yet, beyond all of this, there is a sense that a new commitment is forming in his mind. Looking to the future, Kanneh-Mason says he hopes to take more of his music into the homelands of his parents. During the trip to Sierra Leone he borrowed a cello from the music school and played for the prime minister. “Of course, poverty and health are the priority there, but that doesn’t mean that adding music is not of value. As a Sierra Leonean, it feels very natural for me to want to go there and play.”

While Kanneh-Mason’s mother was born in Sierra Leone, his father Stuart’s family came from Antigua. This is a place he has visited many times on family holidays, first to stay with his grandparents and, more recently, to work with the youth orchestra there, the “vision” of the High Commissioner for Antigua and Barbuda.

“These young people are so committed and proud,” he says. “This year we are performing a movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which they are excited about, because they know it is an important part of the classical repertoire. The piece will be a push for them and stretch their individual technique, but it will be cool to see them perform it. We are at a nice place now where a lot of musicians who were the first to play in the orchestra are teaching the younger ones. Some of my friends from different organisations have gone there to teach and I teach on Zoom.”

Kanneh-Mason says it is too soon to say how far the youth orchestra might go, but a concert hall in Antigua would be “a wonderful attraction” to go with this beautiful island’s beaches and carnival.

“A lot of the students in the orchestra take part in inter-island steel-band competitions. I love listening to steel bands and have enjoyed trying it myself, though I am not used to playing a percussive instrument.” Could Kanneh-Mason’s first public appearance playing the steel drum be imminent? Apparently not, which is a shame. A steel band encore after a cello recital could be a real winner.

‘Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Shostakovich & Britten’ is released by Decca on May 9

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