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‘Music is never fixed in me’ … cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason on surviving a ‘volcano of racism’

A remark about Rule, Britannia! led to uproar but the star musician is concentrating on the joy and power of classical music. As his first book is published, he talks to Charlotte Higgins• Read an exclusive extract from Kanneh-Mason’s new book

A few weeks before, though, I’d heard it sing in the Barbican, London, as he swept through Shostakovich’s first cello concerto with the Czech Philharmonic, the piece with which he won BBC Young Musician nine years ago. It is hard to believe Kanneh-Mason is still only 26: he is touring with some of the best orchestras and conductors in the world, has an MBE, is a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, and, for the two billion people who watched, is the young cellist who played at the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s wedding. He loved playing instruments he wasn’t so advanced on – bass guitar and trumpet – in bands and for shows, and spent time “being part of a bigger musical community, and just sharing ideas … Without that I certainly wouldn’t be the musician I am.”

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