SHEKU KANNEH-MASON & HEYWARD
Kurt Weill’ s Lost in the Stars with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the world premiere of Giorgio Battistelli’ s opera, Wake for the Birmingham Opera Company.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Jonathon studied conducting at the Boston Conservatory of Music and London’ s Royal Academy of Music. In 2023, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music; an honour reserved for Academy alumni.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason’ s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether that’ s performing for children in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’ s leading concert venues. Highlights of the 2025 – 26 season include the New York Philharmonic as Artist in Residence, the London Philharmonic on tour, the Orchestre de Paris, Orchestra
Sheku Kanneh-Mason
of Santa Cecilia Rome, the Philharmonia Orchestra London, the Aukland Philharmonia, and the Baltimore, Vienna, and Sydney symphony orchestras.
A Decca Classics recording artist, Sheku released Shostakovich & Britten in May 2025, featuring Shostakovich’ s Cello Concerto No. 2, performed with John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London, alongside the cello sonatas of Shostakovich and Britten, recorded with Isata Kanneh-Mason. September 2025
Chris O’ Donovan saw the release of the second Kanneh- Mason family album, River of Music, also on Decca Classics.
Sheku is a graduate of London’ s Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Hannah Roberts, and in May 2022, was appointed as the Academy’ s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. Sheku was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire( MBE) in the 2020 New Year’ s Honours List. After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, Sheku’ s performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle in 2018 was watched by two billion people worldwide. He plays on a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700 which is on indefinite loan to him. Sheku Kanneh-Mason appears by arrangement with Enticott Music Management, and records exclusively for Decca Classics.
NOTES ON THE PROGRAM
By James M. Keller
Jonathan Leshnoff
Born September 8, 1973, in New Brunswick, New Jersey Resides in Baltimore, Maryland
STARBURST [ 2010 ]
In a 2021 interview published by Music- Web International, journalist Lee Denham asked composer Jonathan Leshnoff how he would like to be remembered in posterity.“ I would like to be remembered as a symphonist,” Leshnoff replied,“ but if not that, then as a composer whose music took people on a journey. Where that journey took them, what they choose to see or hear, whether they experienced something scary, or painful— that’ s their choice, but it’ s my job to open that door. However, if at the end of that journey their life is at a better place than it was at the start, then I have done my job— and that would make me very happy.”
A professor of music at Towson University, Leshnoff has written four symphonies plus a Symphony for Winds, has produced many concertos( 14 at last count), and has composed a number of shorter orchestral works such as Starburst, his most frequently programmed piece.“ When I was composing it,” Leshnoff noted in his MusicWeb interview,“ my children told me,‘ It sounds like stars!’ And I suppose it does sound like how I’ d imagine the cosmic vortex of clouds and matter would sound— and so it became Starburst.” Since its introduction, by the Baltimore Symphony in 2010, this eight-minute piece has been programmed by some 20 American orchestras and has been adapted into a version for symphonic band, premiered by the United States Marine Band.
“ Believe it or not,” Leshnoff observed in an video created for the Nashville Symphony,“ writing a short piece is much harder than writing a big 25 or
30-minute piece, because with the latter you have lots of time and space to explore … like a leisurely meal. But [ when ] you’ re talking about a piece of seven or eight minutes, you’ ve got to get right to the point.… I had to come up with a plan, which was to start small, get big, and suddenly, in the middle of the piece, everything drops out. And instrument by instrument they drop out until only the clarinet is sounding. And the clarinet takes an internal cadenza, a long, extended free moment where it floats over the orchestra, and then immediately after, the piece picks up again and kind of explodes with a supernova.”
Instrumentation: Two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, three clarinets( third doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, vibraphone, crotales, snare drum, chimes, glockenspiel, marimba, xylophone, bass drum, and strings.
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