These concerts are the North Carolina Symphony debut for Isata Kanneh-Mason.
Following her concerto debut at the BBC Proms in 2023, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason was invited to open the festival in July 2024 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Elim Chan. She appeared with the European Union Youth Orchestra and Iván Fischer in the summer of 2024, performing Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Tune at Carnegie Hall, 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, the Berliner Philharmonie, Brussels’ BOZAR, and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. Solo recital appearances include the Lucerne Festival, Piano aux Jacobins in Toulouse, the Schumann-Haus in Düsseldorf, and PHIL Haarlem in the Netherlands. In concerto performance, she appears with the philharmonic orchestras of London, Bergen, Bremen, and Duisburg, as well as on tour with the Staatskapelle Weimar and the Residentie Orkest.
In 2023/24, Kanneh-Mason gave performances with The Philadelphia Orchestra and The Cleveland Orchestra, National Arts Centre Orchestra Ottawa, NCPA Orchestra Beijing, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra on tour in the United States and Germany, Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, among others.
Kanneh-Mason has recorded four solo albums: Romance (2019), Summertime (2021), Childhood Tales (2023), and Mendelssohn (2024). Her latest release presents music from two Mendelssohn siblings, including the First Piano Concerto by Felix and the long-lost Easter Sonata by his sister Fanny, alongside transcriptions of some of Felix’s most famous music by Rachmaninoff and Liszt.
Kanneh-Mason has received awards including the Leonard Bernstein Award from the Schleswig-Holstein Festival and an Opus Klassik award for best young artist. She also released two albums of her favorite works for intermediate and advanced piano students in 2023.
