Hackney teacher’s young protégé bound for stardom

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From lessons in Dalston to prestige gigs: cellist Sheku Kanne-Mason

* Update 190518: the 19-year-old cellist today played three pieces for wed-this-afternoon Megan Markle and Prince Harry as they signed the marriage register at St George’s Chapel in Windsor. Schubert’s Ave Maria, Gabriel Fauré’s Après un Rêve and a piece by contemporary composer Chris Hazell were played, with moving sensitivity, by Kanneh-Mason

 

A 17-YEAR-OLD music student taught by a Hackney cellist is on the brink of an international career after winning one of Britain’s top contests.

After Sheku Kanneh-Mason, top, won the 2016 Young Musician of the Year competition last night Saturday 15 May 2016 he thanked his teacher, Ben Davies, with Sheku, right, and everyone else who “helped me on this extraordinary journey”.

Kanneh-Mason and some of his super-talented siblings have been commuting every Saturday from their Nottingham home to the Royal Academy of Music in Marylebone, where Sheku holds a junior scholarship.

The Roman Catholic comprehensive schoolboy performed Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No 1 at the Barbican in the City for his winning performance in the BBC contest final.

Exclusive concert: The Kanneh-Masons at St Paul’s in Stoke Newington
Hackney people were privileged earlier this year to see him perform when teacher Davies, of Dalston, arranged a concert by Sheku and three of his siusters at a church hall in Stoke Newington.

That was then: from now on Sheku Kanneh-Mason will be playing in rather more elevated venues. And Ben Davies’s client list is likely to grow bigger.

David Altheer 160516

* Backstory: Hackney help for stunning muso

* Apart from Facebook pic of Davies and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, all pictures on this page © DavidAltheer [at] gmail.com, and all for sale for reproduction. Most photographs are available in bigger formats.

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