Isata Kanneh-Mason
A postgraduate student at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Isata Kanneh-Mason has embarked on a successful and increasingly busy concert career as a solo artist, with concerto appearances, solo recitals and chamber concerts throughout the UK and abroad. Isata also continues to perform with her siblings, including regular duo recitals with her brother, the cellist, Sheku Kanneh-Mason. Highlights this season include appearances at the Lucerne Festival, the Zurich Tonhalle, Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Saint-Denis Festival in Paris, and an extensive US tour, including their debut recital at New York’s Carnegie Hall. Isata has also performed in the Portland Piano Series in Oregon, the Barbican Centre’s Sound Unbound Series, The Color of Music Festival in South Carolina, in Amsterdam, the Caribbean, the Cayman Islands, and Canada.

Isata reached her category final in the 2014 BBC Young Musician competition, winning the Walter Todds Bursary for the most promising musician before the Grand Final. She has since performed several times on television and radio, including BBC Radio 3 In Tune, the Radio 3 RPS Awards, BBC2 Proms Extra, Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, Al Jazeera TV, BBC World Service, Channel 4, The One Show, ITV Born To Shine, BBC2 Classroom Heroes, and a feature for CBS’s Sunday Morning.

A highlight of 2019 will be the release in the summer of Isata’s first recording for Decca Classics, an album of Clara Schumann’s piano music in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the composer’s birth. At the centre of the album is the piano concerto, recorded with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Holly Mathieson.

Having been awarded the Gwendolyn Reiche scholarship for postgraduate study, Isata continues to learn with Carole Presland at the Royal Academy of Music in London. She previously completed her undergraduate degree at the Academy as an Elton John scholar, and performed with Sir Elton in 2013 in Los Angeles.

Isata is grateful to Nottingham Soroptimist Trust, Mr and Mrs John Bryden, Frank White, Awards for Young Musicians, and Sir Elton John.