Jeneba Kanneh-Mason

Biography

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason is a pianist and cellist signed to Sony Classical.

She was a Keyboard Category Finalist in BBC Young Musician 2018, winner of the Murs du Son Prize at the Lagny-Sur-Marne International Piano Competition in France, 2014, and winner of The Nottingham Young Musician 2013.

She also scooped the top prize at the Iris Dyer Piano Prize at The Royal Academy of Music, Junior Academy, where she studied with Patsy Toh.

She has since performed with several of the world’s top orchestras, including the BBC Philharmonic and Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and at the world’s great concert halls including Zurich Tonhalle, London’s Wigmore Hall and at the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields.

Kanneh-Mason made her Royal Albert Hall debut in 2021, performing Florence Price’s Concerto in One Movement with the Chineke! Orchestra, conducted by Kalena Bovell.

In 2022, she was named in Classic FM’s Rising Stars, an annual list of 30 of today’s most exciting classical music artists under the age of 30. That year, Kanneh-Mason also performed in a Sky Arts TV showcase of Classic FM’s Rising Stars presented by Julian Lloyd Webber.

In 2024, Kanneh performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.2 with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Classic FM Live.

Jeneba grew up in a hardworking, musical household, and is the sister of cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason, violinist Braimah Kanneh-Mason, and three more musical younger siblings called Konya, Animata and Mariatu.

“They’re very, very close knit and they all understand each other,” their mother Kadiatu told Classic FM once in an interview. “They understand how hard the work is and they understand the psychological burden of having to get up every morning and practise.”

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason and her siblings all appeared together, along with actor Olivia Coleman, on a 2020 Decca Classics recording of Saint-Saëns’s popular piece, The Carnival of the Animals, with narration added, written by children’s author Michael Morpurgo. She played the cello in this particular recording.

Kanneh-Mason signed to the Sony Classical label in 2024, at the age of 22, and her debut recording, Fantasie, features works by Frédéric Chopin, Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin, Margaret Bonds, Florence Price, and William Grant Still.

Did you know… Kanneh-Mason made her debut as a radio host in 2023, presenting on Classic FM as part of The Kanneh-Mason Family Takeover.