Location: A house in a quiet Nottingham suburb.
Timeline: a day in lockdown, 2020.
Lens: Imagine: This House is Full of Music, a BBC documentary.
Cast: Dr Kadiatu and Stuart Kanneh-Mason, their seven offspring – Isata (piano), Braimah (violin), Sheku (cello), Konya (piano/violin), Jeneba (piano/cello), Aminata (violin/piano), and Mariatu (cello/piano) – and Plinio Fernandes, guitarist and family-friend from Brazil, who is in their lockdown ‘bubble’.
Setting: Beautiful strains of the ancient ballad Scarborough Fair are dying away: Sheku on cello, Plinio on guitar, playing in the garden as a breeze ruffles bushes every hue of green.
Cue: Babbling, joyful sounds of tumbling keyboard notes, feet pounding down stairs, a glorious cacophony of voices.
Programme presenter Alan Yentob is metaphorically scratching his head: ‘I can’t help thinking that, with eight musicians living under one roof, how can they find enough space and time to keep match-fit?’ he muses to us, the viewers, who are scratching our heads in agreement.
The siblings and Plinio – four sitting on a crowded beige settee, cream throw ruffled; four perched on the back of it – enlighten him.
‘The pianists have a rotation with the pianos,’ Braimah says. ‘Everyone else practises in bathrooms, bedrooms…’
‘Yeah,’ they all nod.
‘And then wherever you can get anywhere.’
‘What about the kitchen?’
They all shake their heads, laughing.
‘No one ever goes…’
‘Not yet…’ says Isata Kanneh-Mason, pianist.
Isata, your new album is Prokofiev: you and he go back a long way!
Yes, particularly with the Piano Concerto No 3, at the centre of the album, because I’ve loved it for so many years.
It was a piece I heard for the first time when I was 18, during a time when I wasn’t feeling very motivated about practising. It reignited my passion. And so getting to record it is a huge milestone in my life.
Can you remember exactly what it was that thrilled you?
First of all, it was a YouTube performance with Yuja Wang playing: I discovered her for the first time. She’s someone I found very inspiring as a player.
And I heard the concerto as extremely exciting: it made classical music and piano-playing feel, I suppose, ‘modern’. Like the music was coming to life in the moment in front of me.
The rhythmic excitement in the piece is something I love in music in general.
Do you ever wish you could go back and see a piece such as this first performed – especially one that shocked audiences in the way it did?
It would be so fascinating to time-travel and see the reaction. Also to see how people played it. I often listen to Rachmaninov’s own recordings, for example, and you can see stylistically we play things so differently now to how they might have played it then.
But no matter the composer; no matter the piece; no matter the interpretation you bring to it: you never want it to feel like you’re playing something from the past; something that’s stale.
You mention Rachmaninov. Your mum, in her latest book, tells how your Antiguan grandfather always dreamed that one of his granddaughters would play the Second Piano Concerto. You and Jeneba have!
My Antiguan granddad has always had such a love of classical music but felt like he didn’t quite have access to that world: from his parents not being able to afford lessons, to learning later on but not having access to the opportunities. There are so many images my parents have painted of him walking past people’s windows and hearing music floating outside. Always that yearning. Always that dream.
Your mum has said how difficult it was, when you were growing up, to find children’s books on classical music that showed anything other than eminent-looking White men…
I think my parents acted very strategically. Because, yes, it would be predominantly White men in the classical content we consumed; but then we also consumed other inspiring Black people in different fields. Those things would be side by side.
But I definitely feel really happy to think there could be other Black children looking at us and feeling inspired by us.
Do you ever imagine meeting some of the composers whose music you play?
I’ve often thought about having a piano lesson with Chopin. There are books about what a great teacher he was. I imagine him scrutinising my technique and having lots to say about it. I find that idea fascinating. I don’t have a strong desire to sit down and have dinner with them because, for most, we’re worlds apart in terms of life. But the common ground is always music — and that’s what I love about it.
Tell us about your upcoming Cheltenham Music Festival appearance…
I’ve been going to the festival since quite early in my career: I definitely feel a strong connection. It’s not far from Wales so my Welsh grandmother often comes. I usually have at least one family member in the audience: it feels very warm and homely in that way. So far, I’ve only gone to Cheltenham for the festival. I’ve walked through the town; I often have food there and it always feels very relaxing — but I’ve never been on holiday or a trip to Cheltenham outside of that… yet! Do put ‘yet’!
I love the idea of all seven of you siblings getting together at home. Is it chaos and joy?
Actually, we all had a huge meal on Easter Sunday, with groundnut soup, a Sierra Leonean dish. People brought cakes; we had plantains. There’s lots of chatting and lots of laughter. We had a huge debate about which composer was better: Chopin or Beethoven. A younger sister said: ‘I think Chopin’. We were saying: ‘Well, you haven’t listened to enough Beethoven to know!’
Describe a moment of perfect contentment?
Either on a long walk through nature with family and friends – it could be in Nottingham but I was thinking mountainous countryside… probably Wales. Cut off from the world; no technology; just together, talking and walking…
Or sitting on a beanbag with my book – no sounds, no distractions. I’m near the end of Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney and about to start A Little Life, [by Hanya Yanagihara] which everyone is warning me is really upsetting. I’m in a happy mood right now, so it’s a good time to start! Our mum wouldn’t allow it!’
Sheku Kanneh-Mason asks if I can move our Zoom interview forward.
‘That was really helpful for my day; for my teaching and so on. So thank you very much,’ he says, as he hoves into view an hour ‘early’, sitting outside in front of a house window.
‘I’d have moved it to 3am, if you’d asked me,’ I tell him, embarrassingly sycophantically.
Yet 100 per cent truthfully.
‘Bless you,’ he says.
I’ve been longing to interview this incredible cellist from this incredible family. One of seven siblings, all state-educated, who’ve taken the classical-music world by storm. ‘Let us make the case,’ as one American TV presenter succinctly put it, ‘that the most successful music conservatory is not in Paris, Vienna or Berlin but, rather, in a house in a tree-lined street in Nottingham, England.’
Parents, Kadiatu – a former English lecturer – and Stuart – a business executive – not only gave up their time to nurture their talented children; they gave up a huge part of their income, too.
And it paid off – if you care to use that expression.
Not only in terms of fulfilment; but extraordinary achievement too.
In Sheku’s case, he shot into the public gaze, aged 17, in 2016, as the first Black musician to win the BBC Young Musician competition.
As if that wasn’t enough, he reshot into that gaze nearly two years later, playing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. There he is, as bride and bridegroom disappear to sign the register, sitting in the aisle. Looking, for all the world, as if it is just he and his cello…
Rather than an orchestra and two billion pairs of eyes.
Sheku and his sister, Isata, are coming to play at July’s Cheltenham Music Festival once again: a double act – Boulanger, Rebecca Clarke, Mendelssohn and Schumann – combining two outstanding talents.
It’s a longed-for concert, not only by us; but by the siblings too.
Last November, Sheku sustained a finger-injury that meant postponing not only his work, but some of his-and-Isata’s too: they were due to play together in Europe and the US.
A really tough time…
But, listen: we’re talking in early April – and the finger is getting a lot better. He’s been slowly getting some of the movements back, doing a bit of practice, refamiliarising himself with the cello.
So, yes, it’s been tough.
‘It’s been a very odd time because, of course, I’m very used to and very obsessed with playing every day and exploring music in that way. I’ve been exploring it in other ways: listening to music and playing the piano a lot.’
Interesting.
‘Well, because the piano takes quite a lot less…’ he pauses, with a smile. ‘Certainly the level of piano I play, less force on my finger and I can do things with simple left-hand bass lines.’
Tough on his mental health too, when it’s something all-consuming? But, equally – I throw in – a chance to do things he wouldn’t normally do. Such as… err… going for walks?
Honestly, I’ve no idea how much spare time a musician of this calibre might have.
‘I enjoy lots of other things outside of playing the cello,’ he gently corrects me. ‘Usually I enjoy them in between my life as a cellist. It’s been interesting and nice to spend a whole day reading a book, for example.’
Go on – what?
‘I’m reading Half of a Yellow Sun [by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie].
Oh my gosh — one of my favourite books…!
‘It’s incredible. Yeah. I’m really, really into that.’
To tell the story of Sheku Kanneh-Mason MBE (of pretty much any of the siblings) would take nothing less than a book. Such as the two his mum has written.
But here goes.
He was just six and already playing the violin when he was taken to a cello concert in Nottingham. He jokes that because his brother played the violin: ‘I wanted to have a bigger instrument than he did!’
Certainly, encouragement from his dad, Stuart, an amateur cellist, meant he could try a full-sized instrument to see how he liked it.
And he’s never looked back… even though that meant, from the tenderest age, putting in hours of practice each day. Even his mum, Kadiatu, in her book To Be Young, Gifted and Black (ah – Nina Simone, 1969 protest/celebration) talks of how her young self wanted to be out playing with other children instead of practising the clarinet in her bedroom.
Did Sheku ever feel similarly?
‘Practice can be – is – a very solitary thing. I think it’s much easier when everyone around you is also doing it in the same house: I found that a great comfort; very helpful.’
Sure, he says without rancour, he had to miss the odd party; the odd this and that.
But his siblings encouraged each other. ‘In a way, the days where you do miss those things and still practise and still focus are probably the days that count.
‘Because it’s very easy to practise when there’s nothing else going on. If you can do it when you’re tired; when you’re frustrated; when you’re distracted; then those are probably the really important ones to do.’
The hardest years, for most, are the teenage ones when so many give up.
At that age, he says: ‘It’s difficult to see the long-term benefit of practising consistently for 20 years’.
But, he half-jokes, he’s blessed with an obsessive gene he traces back to his dad. ‘For him, it’s running and watching films over and over again.’
Can Sheku catch him?
‘On long distance, there’s no way!’
He’s also blessed with a heritage that’s as fascinating as it is multi-faceted. His Welsh grandmother, Megan, married a Sierra Leonean, Bernard — over here to study — whom she met at a dance. Kadiatu was born in her dad’s village, though lived in Wales from the age of eight after Bernard died of a heart condition.
Stuart, born in England, is of Antiguan descent.
The family has spent lots of time in both Antigua – where they support a youth orchestra – and Wales.
But last year was their first ever visit to Sierra Leone.
‘It was really one of the most amazing couple of weeks of my life,’ Sheku says.
‘I’d grown up hearing a lot about it through stories from my mum; eating the food from Sierra Leone; meeting my family who have come over to the UK. I felt very Sierra Leonean in my name [Sheku] and very connected to a place that only existed in my imagination. Being there really completed an understanding of who I am.’
Favourite moment?
‘Arriving into the village my mum grew up in. We were welcomed really warmly by the whole village. The children had a day off school and they greeted us and sang songs and danced.
‘We met all the elders of the family and they told the whole story and history of the family… A special moment, to feel part of such an amazing community.’
And how fascinating to be able to picture where your grandmother journeyed to, from her village in Wales. I mean, for her, it might as well have been the moon or Mars.When she went to Sierra Leone on a boat to marry my grandfather, I think her parents thought that was the last time they’d ever see her; a really brave and extraordinary trip to make. When we were there, my grandmother came, and she’s still fluent in all of the languages. That took a lot of people by surprise.’
I love the Kanneh-Masons’ story that defies so many classical music tropes.
And I tell Sheku one of my own (though I can’t quite compete): how my great-great-great grandfather, James Brown of Huddersfield, started life as a boot-maker and eventually became a luthier whose instruments still sell for tens of thousands.
‘How?’
I’ve no idea.
‘Actually,’ Sheku says, ‘I used to play a cello from the age of about 14 to 18, made by someone who was a plumber all their life. Then they retired… and learned to make instruments. It was a great instrument: really beautiful. My first full-size cello.’
His current cello, on indefinite loan, is a Matteo Goffriller dating from 1700.
It must be an intense relationship, between the two of them?
‘It is! It is. I love my cello. It allows me to go very intensely and vividly into the music. It has its own personality, certainly. It feels like a very earthy and dark colour – that’s how I would describe it. It’s also how it looks, visually. It has very large f-holes so it feels very imposing.’
And if the cello were a person?
‘We would have very intense debates and conversations: it would really challenge me. I don’t think it would be a very simple relationship – and I quite enjoy the complexity of working within it.’.
Sheku and Isata Kanneh-Mason will be in concert as part of Cheltenham Music Festival on Thursday, July 9, 7.30pm, at Cheltenham Town Hall: cheltenhamfestivals.org/music
shekukannehmason.com
isatakannehmason.com
kannehmasons.com
photo: Chris O’Donovan
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