Sheku Kanneh-Mason was six years old when he fell in love with the cello. “I remember seeing a whole orchestra performing and being just excited by the look of the cello, and asked to have lessons,” the British cellist said. “I think my mom was relieved because … I clearly wasn’t somehow interested in the violin, but the cello immediately I was really into and had a great teacher from the start.”
Playing this instrument that mimics the human voice through its range and tone is an “embrace,” Kanneh-Mason explains, “sort of like dancing with the instrument … It’s just great to be so close to this amazing music and for it to come out of the instrument that’s so close to you.”
Kanneh-Mason spoke with Rachel Martin while visiting Washington, where he performed at NPR’s headquarters for a Tiny Desk concert released in November. (He called the experience “nice and intimate.”) Surrounded by LPs, books and memorabilia of all sorts at Bob Boilen’s desk, Kanneh-Mason performed some of the solo preludes composer Edmund Finnis wrote for him, along with his own arrangements of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” and the Welsh folk song “Myfanwy.”
The latter carries special meaning for Kanneh-Mason, whose grandmother is Welsh. “As children particularly, we’d spent most of our summers and other of the school holidays in Wales and walking in the hills,” he recalled. “The music is such a big part of the culture as well, particularly singing and, that’s how I got to know this music.” The melody, which the cellist accompanies with left-hand pizzicato, is about longing for love. “But I think for a lot of Welsh people, particularly ones who don’t live in in Wales, it has this feeling of longing for home and longing for that place that is very, very special to us,” he says.
Kanneh-Mason is the third-eldest of seven siblings, all classically trained musicians. In addition to the Welsh connection, they also share Antiguan heritage, through their father Stuart Mason, and ties to Sierra Leone through their mother Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, who authored a memoir about raising her very musical family.
During pandemic-era lockdowns, the family practiced and performed livestreamed concerts together out of their parents’ home in Nottingham. “It was full of people and music and food,” he said. “We kept ourselves somehow or somewhat sort of entertained and sane a lot through music.” They also played soccer outdoors and had a cooking competition — which he won. When his sister Isata’s April 2020 concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall was scrapped as theaters shut down, the siblings gathered together for a small ensemble performance of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto.
Kanneh-Mason became a household name when he performed at Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding in 2018 at Windsor Castle — he was just a teenager, and nearly two billion people tuned in. He also won the 2016 BBC Young Musician of the Year award, becoming the first Black musician to score the prize since its launch in 1978. And last year, at the age of 22, he was awarded an MBE, a British honor for outstanding achievement. Now, the cellist performs on stages around the world, sharing his love of classical, folk and pop.
He plays this eclectic mix on a cello that’s more than 300 years old: Kanneh-Mason received a long-term loan of a cello built by Matteo Goffriller in Venice in 1700. It’s an exceptional instrument the cellist has described as having a “kaleidoscope of tonal qualities.” The Florian Leonhard Fellowship awarded the loan last year — a “dream come true” for Kanneh-Mason. Like many professional musicians, he cannot afford this antique piece of craftsmanship, and its lifetime use was purchased for a seven-figure sum by an anonymous syndicate of private investors, according to The Strad magazine. The late German cellist and conductor Johannes Goritzki previously played the instrument.
Growing up, Kanneh-Mason recalls the challenges of getting used to the routine of practice — in his case, half an hour or an hour before school and two or three hours after returning home.
“To be honest, it’s what it takes … there’s no shortcut,” he said, noting his parents were “very helpful” in encouraging him. “I’ve grown to understand it’s a really luxurious process to spend time on your own and just explore this music and focus and do all the problem solving and things like that. It can be quite a beautiful experience, but it’s hard work as well, of course.”
He also had some advice for aspiring young musicians: “Always, as often as possible, remind yourself of why you love music and what’s important about it, and [don’t] lose sight of the importance of communicating music that can hopefully impact the audience that you are playing to. It can hopefully impact their life.”
Kanneh-Mason performs on Dec. 8-10 at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center before touring in Germany, Austria and Portugal. His latest album is Song.
This interview was conducted by Rachel Martin and edited by Lilly Quiroz. To hear the broadcast version of this story, use the audio player at the top of this page.
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Transcript :
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Sheku Kanneh-Mason rose to international fame when he performed at Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding in 2018 at Windsor Castle. He was just a teenager at the time, and nearly 2 billion people tuned in. Now the British cellist performs on stages around the world, sharing his love of classical music but also folk and pop. We talked to Sheku when he was in town to perform at NPR for a Tiny Desk concert. He played an arrangement of Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEKU KANNEH-MASON’S “NO WOMAN NO CRY”)
SHEKU KANNEH-MASON: I really enjoy making arrangements for solo cello. I think I spent a lot of time probably when I should have or could have been practicing.
MARTIN: I asked him how he found himself in the cello, the instrument that most closely imitates the human voice.
KANNEH-MASON: From the start, I always enjoyed playing. I enjoyed that and the feeling of connecting with an audience. Ideally, you have the focus of everyone in the room on all of the details and the music that you really, really enjoy and hopefully are communicating. That connection between myself and the audience and the music is a beautiful thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEKU KANNEH-MASON’S “NO WOMAN NO CRY”)
MARTIN: What is it about the sound of it that drew you?
KANNEH-MASON: It’s really direct and can be very personal as well. And it has a huge range. You sit and you sort of almost, like, embrace it, and it becomes a part of you because it’s so close…
MARTIN: Yeah.
KANNEH-MASON: …To you physically. And the arms – it’s sort of like dancing with the instrument and making that sort of a physical relationship as much as anything else.
MARTIN: How regimented was the practice?
KANNEH-MASON: When I was at, like, secondary school and primary school, we used to sometimes do, like, half an hour or an hour in the morning before school and then go to school, then come home, do the homework – eat first, then do homework, and then maybe a couple of hours or three hours in the evening.
MARTIN: Two to three hours of practice a night?
KANNEH-MASON: Yeah, because to be honest, it’s what it takes. But it’s something…
MARTIN: So you were like, that’s just life.
KANNEH-MASON: It didn’t feel abnormal ’cause all my siblings were doing similar…
MARTIN: Yeah.
KANNEH-MASON: I mean, practice is a really luxurious process, to spend time on your own and just explore this music and focus and do all the problem-solving and things like that. But it’s hard work as well, of course.
MARTIN: So there was never any, like – I don’t know, I used to try to fake my parents out, and I’d have my metronome going.
KANNEH-MASON: Yeah.
MARTIN: And I’d, like, play it, but I – OK.
KANNEH-MASON: Oh, yeah, of course – all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: I wasn’t really practicing.
KANNEH-MASON: I mean, yeah, it wasn’t – I certainly wasn’t a perfect child in this sense.
MARTIN: And I’d, like, take the timer and, like, try to make it go earlier so that they’d…
KANNEH-MASON: That’s a good one. We used to – ’cause my mum used to take one of my younger sisters to violin lessons on a Monday night. This is from maybe when I was, like, 13 or 14 or something like that. And so she’d be out for, like, two, three hours. And so that was always the night where we would, yeah, have…
MARTIN: Maybe do other things.
KANNEH-MASON: Maybe do other things. And then we’d see the car pulling up in the driveway, and then we’d go back to…
MARTIN: Yeah, of course.
KANNEH-MASON: …Or pretend to be in bed or whatever, you know, that kind of – but I think practice is certainly important, and there’s no shortcut for that, I think.
MARTIN: We should say you have six siblings?
KANNEH-MASON: Six siblings – yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: What was it like making music together during the pandemic? You guys did these lockdown concerts, like so many other artists did, just to kind of keep your creative juices alive.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KANNEH-MASON: Yeah, we made lots of music together and did some performances.
MARTIN: This is your parents’ house?
KANNEH-MASON: Yeah, my parents’ house in Nottingham. Yeah, it was full of people and music and food and…
MARTIN: Yeah.
KANNEH-MASON: Yeah, we kept ourselves entertained and sane.
MARTIN: Your most recent solo album is titled “Song.” There are Irish and Welsh ballads. There’s some Bach and Mendelssohn. And there’s an amazing arrangement of “Cry Me A River.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEKU KANNEH-MASON’S “CRY ME A RIVER”)
KANNEH-MASON: It’s in many ways the most personal album recording, but also arranging and writing and improvising as well.
MARTIN: You performed a Welsh ballad in there, a Welsh folk song.
KANNEH-MASON: Yeah. It’s called “Myfanwy.”
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEKU KANNEH-MASON’S “MYFANWY”)
KANNEH-MASON: A beautiful song – it’s also on the album, and it’s one of the songs that I grew up listening to. My grandmother is Welsh, and my mum grew up there as well. So as children, particularly, we’d spend most of our summers and other school holidays in Wales and walking in the hills.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEKU KANNEH-MASON’S “MYFANWY”)
KANNEH-MASON: It’s about this person’s longing for love, but I think for a lot of Welsh people, particularly ones who don’t live in Wales, it has this feeling of longing for home and longing for that place that is very, very special to us.
MARTIN: Are there any other pieces on here that draw a direct link to who you are, your family’s story?
KANNEH-MASON: Yeah. One of the pieces I recorded with Isata, my sister, is “Mendelssohn: Song Without Words,” particularly the one in D major is one that I played.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEKU KANNEH-MASON PERFORMANCE OF FELIX MENDELSSOHN’S “SONGS WITHOUT WORDS”)
KANNEH-MASON: I still have the same piece of sheet music from when I first played it. And so there’s, like, that feeling of childhood, certainly. And I think that’s in the spirit of the music as well, the innocence, (vocalizing).
(SOUNDBITE OF SHEKU KANNEH-MASON PERFORMANCE OF FELIX MENDELSSOHN’S “SONGS WITHOUT WORDS”)
KANNEH-MASON: That’s how it goes. It sounds much better on the cello, I would say – hopefully much, much, much better.
MARTIN: What do you tell young kids who want to be you?
KANNEH-MASON: To always, as often as possible, remind yourself of why you love music and sort of what’s important about it and to not lose sight of the importance of communicating music that can hopefully impact the audience that you are playing to. It can hopefully impact their life.
MARTIN: British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, thank you so much for talking with us.
KANNEH-MASON: Pleasure. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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