Sublime cellist from family that make the Von Trapps seem totally tuneless!
ONE WOULD be forgiven for assuming that performing live in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in front of 600 royal wedding guests including senior royals, film stars and sports people, and a global audience of billions, would be the teeniest bit daunting for even the most talented teenager.
But it seems nothing can fluster 19-year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason.
Framed by a vast floral arch and immaculate in a Paul Smith suit, he calmly pulled the spike out of the bottom of his cello and played three tunes — Maria Theresia von Paradis’s Sicilienne, Gabriel Faure’s Apres un reve and Franz Schubert’s Ave Maria — and everything stopped.
Everyone took a breath; tears flowed; even Meghan’s mother Doria looked relaxed for the first time in the proceedings as he struck up.
As the rich dark notes washed around the world, social media went into overdrive, declaring Sheku’s performance the musical triumph of the wedding.
Afterwards, he smiled gracefully, quietly packed his 17th-century, £500,000 Amati cello into its smart blue case and, like any self- respecting millennial, updated his Twitter feed: ‘ The atmosphere was amazing and I’m proud to have played a small part in the celebrations. It’s a day I will remember for the rest of my life.’
A small part? Most people would be singing from the treetops, or bragging about how well it went. How refreshingly modest. But Sheku is an old hand at notching up extraordinary achievements.
THIS is, after all, the young man from Nottingham who passed the grade eight cello exam when he was just nine, with the highest mark of the year in the UK, (to top it off, he’d only been learning for three years) and, the same year, won a junior scholarship to join the Junior Academy of the Royal College of Music.
Aged 15, he reached the 2015 semifinals of Britain’s Got Talent in a classical music ensemble with four of his siblings. And in May 2016 he became the first black winner in the history of the BBC’s Young Musician contest.
He has performed at No 10 Downing Street, been the subject of a BBC Four documentary ( Young, Gifted And Classical: The Making Of A Maestro), performed twice at the BAFTAs (the only musician ever to play two years running), and in January released his album Inspiration, which made it into the Top 20 UK Album chart.
Music maestros eulogise about his ‘big noble tone’, his ‘virtuosity’; his notes ‘as yielding as softened butter’ and fellow cellist and conductor Julian Lloyd Webber has described him as ‘the best young cellist’ in the world.
Sheku was brought up, the third eldest of seven precociously talented siblings, as part of a Nottingham family so musical they make the Von Trapps sound positively off-key.
Big sister Isata, the eldest, studied at the Royal Academy on a scholarship funded by Sir Elton John (after she played for him at a concert in America) and was a Young Musician piano finalist in 2014.
Brother Braimah, now 20, also took part in the 2014 Young Musician contest as part of a string quintet.
The only sibling not to have achieved grade eight distinctions in at least two instruments is the youngest, little sister Mariatu — but then she is barely eight.
Their children’s extraordinary talent came as a shock to Stuart and Kadiatu Kanneh- Mason. He is a business manager; she was a university lecturer who gave up work after Sheku was born. While both played instruments up to grade eight at school, neither felt any great musical calling.
Sheku took up the cello only by chance. His elder brother was already playing the violin and, in a fit of sibling rivalry, six-year- old Sheku ditched the violin after a month and plumped for the cello ‘because it was bigger’.
As a child he’d get up every Saturday at 4.30am to travel to the Royal Academy’s junior school in London. During the train journey from Nottingham he would watch YouTube videos of cellists Jacqueline du Pre and Russian Mstislav Rostropovich.
However, his was not the rarefied, lonely childhood of many a musical prodigy.
Monday to Friday he attended the local Trinity comprehensive school, where he was in the school football team, hung out with his mates and listened to Bob Marley and the Jackson Five.
To celebrate the end of his A-levels (maths, music and physics) Sheku even blew off steam on a boys’ holiday to Mallorca.
Growing up with six other musical prodigies made him feel more normal than different, and the Kanneh-Masons’ sprawling home in a leafy Nottingham-
shire suburb was constantly alive with music. ‘I go in my bedroom, my brother goes in his bedroom and the girls fight over the three pianos,’ he said in an interview.
Every part of the house was used — the bathroom ( where the acoustics were superb), the kitchen, the garden . . .
Meanwhile Kadiatu would flit from room to room, sitting with each child in 30-minute blocks to listen to their practice and, presumably, remind herself that all this talent was a blessing.
Because nurturing it meant endless sacrifices.
‘Every penny of our money goes on music,’ she said. ‘We haven’t decorated for years . . . the tiles are coming off the roof. We never buy new clothes. I do the girls’ hair myself because it’s too expensive to take them to a salon. Our car is a wreck.’
To outsiders it might all sound a bit pushy, but Sheku insists his drive is all his own, saying: ‘Although my parents encouraged me to practise, I’ve always wanted to be a musician.’
When Britain’s Got Talent producers approached the family after seeing videos Stuart had posted on YouTube, they weren’t keen but eventually were persuaded by the chance to bring classical music to a wider audience.
‘It was fun but it wouldn’t be something I’d want to do again,’ said Sheku.
Much more up their street is the Chineke! Orchestra, the first in Europe made entirely of black and minority- ethnic musicians, and most of the siblings are members.
In the last year, since leaving school, joining the Royal College of Music (a dream come true) and moving to London, Sheku’s career has taken off.
But in a sign that he remains resolutely down to earth, he also donated a chunk of his concert fees to his old school when he heard that music classes were threatened by funding cuts.
‘To see other children not have the same opportunities as I had would be a huge shame,’ he said.
Meanwhile, he has politely batted away the inevitable attempts to make him — a young black man from a comprehensive school playing classical music — into a political symbol.
‘My job is just to do a good performance,’ he says simply.
He certainly did that on Saturday, even if his involvement in the royal wedding at first came as a total shock. One day in the spring, his mobile rang, and ‘ unknown number’ flashed up.
For once, it was not a PPI seller or someone touting accident insurance, but Meghan Markle, the future Duchess of Sussex, who had heard him perform last June at an event for the Halo Foundation in London.
SHEKU didn’t think twice. ‘ I’m so excited and honoured,’ he tweeted ahead of the wedding. ‘I was bowled over when Ms Markle called me to ask if I would play during the ceremony, and of course I immediately said yes. What a privilege to be able to play the cello at such a wonderful event. I can’t wait.’
His performance on Saturday will doubtless change his life forever but, in typical Sheku fashion, barely an hour after putting away his precious instrument, he was thinking of others, telling his ballooning Twitter following about his big sister Isata’s performance of Rachmaninov’s 2nd piano concerto later that evening.
Earlier this year, he said in his usual quiet way, ‘I think 2018 is going to be a big year’.
Oh Sheku, we couldn’t agree more. But how wonderful that, miraculously, your head has not been turned one jot by such extraordinary success.