After the British royal wedding last May of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, “a trending subject on search engines later on was: Who was that kid with the cello?,” writes Tom Keogh in Friday’s (10/19) Seattle Times. He is nineteen-year-old Sheku Kanneh-Mason, who performs Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations this month with the Seattle Symphony. “He is the third of seven musical children born to Stuart Mason, who works for a luxury hotel chain, and Dr. Kadiatu Kanneh, who used to lecture on literature at the University of Birmingham. Neither parent plays an instrument. ‘All seven of [the kids] are classical musicians and we all perform regularly,’ says Kanneh-Mason…. After claiming the BBC [Young Musician of the Year] honor [in 2016], he was in demand, performing at the 2017 and 2018 British Academy Film Awards; as soloist with the Chineke! Orchestra during London’s BBC Proms summer festival; and signing a recording contract with the Decca label.” His Seattle Symphony performance represents “his first time with an orchestra here, [though] he has performed twice before on this side of the Atlantic [at] the Color of Music Festival in Charleston [and] last November at [a fundraiser’] in New York City’s Carnegie Hall.”
Posted October 22, 2018
