AMBASSADOR

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. He 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. 

A Decca Classics recording artist, Sheku most recently 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. His ninth album on Decca Classics, entitled Hope in Shadow, is to be released in November 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 “Little Sheku and the Animal Orchestra”.