Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cIt was an important trip, which we had been thinking about for a long time,\u201d says Sheku Kanneh-Mason, thinking back to his family visit to Sierra Leone in January. \u201cWe didn\u2019t take our instruments, but there is a music academy in the capital, Freetown, and they gave a beautiful performance for us of traditional music and Afrobeat.\u201dThis was the first time that Sheku and his six siblings had been to the country where their mother was born. When Sheku won the BBC Young Musician award in 2016, the news did not go unnoticed in Sierra Leone and he has clearly become a celebrity there since. This is hardly surprising after playing at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in front of a television audience estimated at two billion, not to mention multiple TV documentaries, the Last Night of the Proms in 2023 and a busy diary of concerts from Berlin to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh to Lucerne.\u201cWe went to my mum\u2019s village and arrived to a welcome of song and dance, which was very beautiful,\u201d says Kanneh-Mason. \u201cThe group of musicians who were playing asked if I would like to try their instruments. I was playing a balangi, a kind of African marimba with wooden keys and a soft, speaking sound. The people communicate in such a strong and warm way and making music together is part of that, where family and community are so important.\u201dPoverty and health are the priority there, but that doesn\u2019t mean that adding music is not of value. As a Sierra Leonean, it feels natural for me to want to go there and playIt is a relief to learn that the Kanneh-Mason family can still find a space in their communal diaries for a family trip. It is not only Sheku, 26, who is busy as a musician. His six siblings \u2014 Isata, Braimah, Konya, Jeneba, Aminata and Mariatu, aged 28 to 15 \u2014 all make music as a family and pianists Isata and Jeneba have followed their brother professionally in making recordings for major companies.After his BBC Young Musician win and the razzmatazz of the royal wedding, it must have been difficult for Kanneh-Mason to hold back the offers. Given the huge amount of media interest he has spawned, he remains remarkably laid back, casually chatty. No wonder people like to work with him.Coming up next is his latest recording for Decca Records. Kanneh-Mason recorded Shostakovich\u2019s Cello Concerto No 1 in 2018 after his winning performance of the work at BBC Young Musician and now he has added the composer\u2019s Second Cello Concerto, conducted by John Wilson with his crack ensemble, the Sinfonia of London.\u201cI got into Shostakovich\u2019s music as a teenager,\u201d says Kanneh-Mason. \u201cI started listening to his string quartets, the symphonies, the concertos, and was captivated by learning the pieces. There are just the two concertos for cello, written for [legendary Russian cellist] Mstislav Rostropovich, but they stretch the instrument to far places. Learning the first concerto meant I needed to develop my technique a lot, but because I loved the piece so much, I was determined.\u201dThe two concertos are very different, but the more lyrical Second is easier to pair with other works. Its sound-world \u2014 \u201cweird and wonderful and patient and soulful\u201d in Kanneh-Mason\u2019s description \u2014 fits well on the recording with the Cello Sonatas of Britten and Shostakovich, for which he is accompanied by his older sister Isata.The Britten sonata was composed for Rostropovich, too, and Kanneh-Mason is pleased that the two sonatas were recorded at the Maltings, Snape, where Rostropovich and Britten worked together. \u201cIt was so nice that Isata and I could perform them in recital there before recording them the next day. The character of the music works so well in that acoustic.\u201dMoving into a new area, he has two books due for publication in May. The first is The Power of Music, in which he tells his own story and celebrates the music that means most to him, its power to transform our mental and physical health and to effect social change. The other is a children\u2019s book, Little Sheku and the Animal Orchestra, a music-filled adventure to a dragon\u2019s cave. He is following in the footsteps of his mother Kadiatu \u2014 a former university lecturer \u2014 whose House of Music, telling the family\u2019s story, is being followed by a new book scheduled for May, To Be Young, Gifted and Black.Also recently announced is a major forthcoming engagement as Mary and James G Wallach artist-in-residence with the New York Philharmonic next season. Two concerts beckon: the first will feature Bloch\u2019s Schelomo, the final work of the composer\u2019s Jewish cycle in which he imagined the solo cellist as the incarnation of King Solomon (Kanneh-Mason says it is \u201cat times extreme, with lonely and delicate bits for the cello, and I am obsessed with it\u201d). The other will have Elgar\u2019s Cello Concerto. He will also perform a recital with Isata as part of the orchestra\u2019s \u201cArtist Spotlight\u201d series.Yet, beyond all of this, there is a sense that a new commitment is forming in his mind. Looking to the future, Kanneh-Mason says he hopes to take more of his music into the homelands of his parents. During the trip to Sierra Leone he borrowed a cello from the music school and played for the prime minister. \u201cOf course, poverty and health are the priority there, but that doesn\u2019t mean that adding music is not of value. As a Sierra Leonean, it feels very natural for me to want to go there and play.\u201dWhile Kanneh-Mason\u2019s mother was born in Sierra Leone, his father Stuart\u2019s family came from Antigua. This is a place he has visited many times on family holidays, first to stay with his grandparents and, more recently, to work with the youth orchestra there, the \u201cvision\u201d of the High Commissioner for Antigua and Barbuda.\u201cThese young people are so committed and proud,\u201d he says. \u201cThis year we are performing a movement of Beethoven\u2019s Fifth Symphony, which they are excited about, because they know it is an important part of the classical repertoire. The piece will be a push for them and stretch their individual technique, but it will be cool to see them perform it. We are at a nice place now where a lot of musicians who were the first to play in the orchestra are teaching the younger ones. Some of my friends from different organisations have gone there to teach and I teach on Zoom.\u201dKanneh-Mason says it is too soon to say how far the youth orchestra might go, but a concert hall in Antigua would be \u201ca wonderful attraction\u201d to go with this beautiful island\u2019s beaches and carnival.\u201cA lot of the students in the orchestra take part in inter-island steel-band competitions. I love listening to steel bands and have enjoyed trying it myself, though I am not used to playing a percussive instrument.\u201d Could Kanneh-Mason\u2019s first public appearance playing the steel drum be imminent? Apparently not, which is a shame. A steel band encore after a cello recital could be a real winner.\u2018Sheku Kanneh-Mason: Shostakovich & Britten\u2019 is released by Decca on May 9Find out about our latest stories first \u2014 follow FT Weekend on Instagram and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic \u201cIt was an important trip, which we had been thinking about for a long time,\u201d says Sheku Kanneh-Mason, thinking back to his family visit to Sierra Leone in January. \u201cWe didn\u2019t take our instruments, but there is a music academy in the capital, Freetown,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":270647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-270646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270648,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270646\/revisions\/270648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}