Originally from Nottingham, the Kanneh-Mason family owes its reputation to cellist prodigy Sheku Kanneh-Mason (b. 1999), whose promising early career was crowned by the insignia of Member of the Order of the British Empire. It includes six other soloists trained at the Conservatory or Royal Academy of Music: Isata (piano), Braimah (violin), Mariatu (cello), Konya and Animata (piano and violin), and Jenneba (cello and piano). The seven musicians, who have won individual awards in competitions, will perform at the Royal Variety Show, the royal family's annual show, in 2019, before going into the studio to record Carnival of the Animals, a musical tale created in 1886 by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The Carnival album, released in 2020, features another member of the family in the person of author Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason and narrators Michael Morpurgo and Olivia Colman. In addition to the main piece, the program includes other compositions and arrangements, including a classic cover of Bob Marley's "Redemption Song ". In 2025, their second album River of Music develops a theme around themes by Handel, Coleridge-Taylor, Chopin(Fantaisie-Impromptu), Liszt, Dvořák, Hughes and Schubert's Quintet in A major "The Trout".
