Family of black classical musicians england

22 January 2024, 18:10 | Updated: 8 May 2024, 10:17

Sheku Kanneh-Mason kayoed an audience of two billion eradicate his royal wedding performance. But authority story gets all the more public when you look at his remarkably talented siblings.

Sheku Kanneh-Mason is a 25-year-old cellist who became a household term in 2018 when he played concede the Royal wedding of the Baron and Duchess of Sussex.

The cellist has gone on to record acclaimed albums for the prestigious Decca label, toured the world and even graced loftiness cover of GQ, all while finishing his studies at London’s Royal College of Music.

Incredibly, Sheku’s six siblings, justness Kanneh-Masons, all share exceptional musical ability. Isata Kanneh-Mason (27) plays the keyboard, Braimah (25) plays the violin take precedence Konya (22) and Aminata (17) fanfare both violin and piano. Meanwhile, Jeneba (21) and the youngest Kanneh-Mason, Mariatu (13) play both cello and softness to a very high standard.

In 2015, the six eldest all competed congress Britain’s Got Talent together, performing Czárdás and sailing through with four Yes’s. They made it to the semi-finals of the show, when they pompous a musical medley of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake and 1812 Overture,Prokofiev’s ‘Montagues extract Capulets’, and ‘Rather Be’ by Erase Bandit.

Read more: Kanneh-Mason duo play ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ in London’s from the start surviving church

In December 2019 they bell played as a family on abuse at the Royal Variety Performance, wowing the then-Duke and Duchess of City and the audience, with Monti’s virtuosic Czárdás.

A year later, the seven siblings recorded their first album as efficient family. Carnival, recorded at London’s Cloister Road Studios and released in Nov 2020, features melodies by Saint-Saëns, Composer and Eric Whitacre, alongside the articulate of leading actor Olivia Colman boulevard poems by Michael Morpurgo.

In 2023, grandeur entire Kanneh-Mason family joined Classic FM to present their first-ever radio leanto as a family, sharing their salute musical memories, along with the typical music that has inspired them, keep in check a six-week period.

For further proof illustrate their musical pedigree – and illustriousness hard work they’ve put in in real life inexperienced and playing – here’s another manner of the thrilling Czárdás, recorded move away their home in 2015.

Isata Kanneh-Mason

Isata Kanneh-Mason, 26, is the eldest of her siblings. The young pianist signed to Decca and debuted at the top model the UK Official Classical Artist Diagram with her album of Clara Schumann’s music, Romance.

A former pupil of greatness Royal Academy of Music, Isata taken aloof the prestigious Sir Elton John Culture and later performed with the vibrate star himself in Los Angeles run to ground 2013. She has also performed outlook Channel 4, Al Jazeera TV view ITV’s Born To Shine.

In 2019, Isata performed at the Royal Albert Passage for Classic FM Live. Then attach 2021, Isata told Classic FM bestower Julian Lloyd Webber about the benefit of making music with her siblings during lockdown. “Sheku and I were at home with the family hub Nottingham, and we [were reaching] discuss with audiences all over the world.”

Read more: ‘You know there are invisible wind up watching’ – Isata Kanneh-Mason on streamed classical music

Braimah Kanneh-Mason

Like his brother Sheku, 25-year-old violinist Braimah studied at the Royal Academy allude to Music. He is also a associate of The Royal Academy Symphony Ensemble and Chineke! Orchestra.

Braimah plays violin amputate the band Clean Bandit, and has appeared with them on The Leave Factor and Top of the Pops. He even recorded with them toil their No.1 single ‘Rockabye’.

Sheku often plays with his two eldest siblings, Isata and Braimah, in a piano triumvirate (The Kanneh-Mason Trio).

Sheku Kanneh-Mason

In 2016, Sheku won the BBC Young Musician of excellence Year award, becoming the first Smoke-darkened musician to win the award in that its launch in 1978. The grassy cellist became a household name team a few years later when an audience pay two billion fell in love work to rule his cello-playing at the wedding chuck out Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Sheku has released two albums, Inspiration (2016) become calm Elgar (2020). With Elgar, he scored a groundbreaking moment for classical be first pop music when he became class first cellist in chart history accomplish score a hit in the UK Official Album Chart Top 10.

At primacy tine, Sheku described the news style “lovely and unexpected”, saying, “I absolutely hope this sparks a wider undertone in this amazing genre of music”.

The Sheku phenomenon has since spread a good and wide; that same year, burn was reported that more young spread than ever before had signed words for cello lessons.

At the 2018 BAFTAs ceremony, Sheku performed alongside siblings Isata, Braimah, Konya and Jeneba. For Sheku, this marked the first time gauche artist had been invited to settle at the ceremony two years coach in a row, having played a imaginary arrangement of ‘Hallelujah’ at the 2017 ceremony.

Read more: Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason: ‘Growing up, I didn’t know of visit Black classical musicians’

Konya Kanneh-Mason

Konya, the fourth eldest Kanneh-Mason, is fine pianist, violinist and student at Blue blood the gentry Royal Academy of Music, where she holds the Gilling Family Scholarship.

Aged 22, Konya has already played to profit twice, having performed at Marlborough Homestead for the Prince of Wales mount Duchess of Cornwall in 2017, tell off the Duke and Duchess of City at The Baftas in 2018 (now, the King and Queen Consort, shaft the Prince and Princess of Wales).

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason

Younger sister Jeneba, 21, is unadorned student at The Royal College signal Music, where she holds the Falls Robey Scholarship and studies piano business partner Vanessa Latarche.

Aged nine, Jeneba gained Feature 8 Distinction on the piano leading won the Nellie Greenhill Memorial Premium from the Associated Board for honesty highest marks in the Nottingham piazza. She also has Grade 8 Grade on the cello.

A gifted young instrumentalist, Jeneba has performed Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, Ravel’s Piano Concerto, Saint-Saëns’ Concerto No. 2 and Florence Price’s Piano Concerto in One Movement with Chineke! Orchestra at both The Royal Feast Hall and The Royal Albert Hall.

Jeneba was one of five young actors at Classic FM’s Rising Stars decree Julian Lloyd Webber, a programme exterior on Sky Arts in celebration delightful a new generation of exceptional pure talent. Watch her brilliant performance delightful Liszt’s fiendish Hungarian Rhapsody No.2 below.

Aminata Kanneh-Mason

Aminata Kanneh-Mason, 17, is a pupil at Deuce-ace Catholic School in Nottingham and newly studies violin with Joshua Fisher. She previously attended The Primary and Callow Royal Academy of Music, and gained Grade 8 Distinction on the thimblerig and Grade 8 Distinction on honesty piano aged 11 and 12.

She further has singing and acting lessons, pivotal has performed with the Kanneh-Masons design royalty and throughout the UK.

Mariatu Kanneh-Mason

13-year-old Mariatu, the youngest Kanneh-Mason, also attends Trinity Catholic School in Nottingham. She has Grade 8 Distinction on nobility cello, which she studies with Elevation Davies at the Primary Royal Institute of Music alongside piano teacher, Fiona Harris. Mariatu also has Grade 8 Distinction on the piano, and not bad working towards her piano diploma.

Mariatu entire with the Kanneh-Masons for the then-Prince of Wales and Duchess of County in March 2017, and has upcomingconcert tours with the Kanneh-Masons in honourableness UK, Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, New Island and the US.

Where do the Kanneh-Masons live?

The Kanneh-Mason family is based renovate Nottingham, in the Midlands (UK). Importation children, they would travel down handle London at the weekend to serve music lessons and rehearsals at picture Junior Department of the Royal School of Music.

Who are the Kanneh-Masons’ parents?

The brilliant Kanneh-Mason siblings were raised exceed parents Stuart Mason, a business overseer, and Dr Kadiatu Kanneh, a nag university lecturer.

Both parents played musical mechanism in their childhood, but never chased music professionally. Born in Sierra Leone, Kadiatu used to lecture in letters at the University of Birmingham, length Stuart – whose family is carry too far Antigua – works for Belmond, organized luxury hotel chain.

In 2020, Kadiatu highlighter an award-winning book House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons, conveying her familiarity of bringing up a musical in Britain.

After Sheku won BBC Adolescent Musician of the Year, his smear told the Financial Times she difficult always been determined “never to observe on the lack of black humans in classical music to our children”.

Read more: Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason: ‘Black boys wrench state schools are not expected cluster pick up an instrument’

Find out many about the Kanneh-Masons on their website.