Isata Kanneh-Mason

Pianist Isata offers eclectic and interesting recital programmes with repertoire encompassing Haydn and Mozart, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann, Chopin and Brahms to Gershwin and beyond. In concerto, she is equally at home in Felix Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann as in Prokofiev and Dohnányi.

Isata is in high demand from concert halls and orchestras worldwide. Following her phenomenally successful concerto debut at the BBC Proms in 2023, she was invited to open the festival in July 2024 with the BBC Symphony and conductor Elim Chan. Isata appears as concerto soloist with the European Union Youth Orchestra and Iván Fischer in summer 2024 performing Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Tune at Carnegie Hall, New York, the Grafenegg Festival, and Bolzano Festival Bozen.

Highlights of the 2024/25 season include Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto at the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie's FREISPIEL festival and at the Ulster Orchestra's season opening concert; and Prokofiev's Third Concerto with the Chineke! Orchestra on tour at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie, Konzerthaus Berlin, Brussels's BOZAR and London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. In concerto performance, Isata appears with the London, Bergen, Bremen, and Duisburg philharmonics, the North Carolina Symphony, and on tour with the Staatskapelle Weimar, and the Residentie Orkest.

Isata continues her longstanding duo collaboration with her cellist brother, Sheku, with performances in the UK and on tour across Europe, the USA, and Canada.

Isata is a Decca Classics artist and has recorded four solo albums for the label – Romance (2019), Summertime (2021), Childhood Tales (2023) and Mendelssohn (2024). Her latest release presents music from two Mendelssohn siblings, including the glittering First Piano Concerto by Felix and the long-lost 'Easter Sonata' by his exceptionally talented but overlooked elder sister Fanny.

Isata has received many awards, including the coveted Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and an Opus Klassik award for best young artist. She also enjoys composing and arranging and released two albums of her favourite works for intermediate and advanced piano students through ABRSM Publishing in 2023.