Page 37 - FULL BOOK Isata Kanneh-Mason Childhood Tales

Dohnányi's Variations on a Nursery Tune (for which she's joined by the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra and their Chief Conductor Domingo Hindoyan).

In the run-up to her performances of the Dohnányi in Detroit this week, Isata spoke to me about
growing up in a 'house full of music', her passion for working with the next generation of young
musicians, and how each piece featured on the album came into her life...

What are you own earliest musical memories?

I have a very blurred recollection of having some recorder lessons when I was about three, but I
can’t remember anything at all about the music itself! My first piano memory is from when I was
about five; we were on holiday at my grandparents’ house in the Caribbean, and they had an
upright piano which I was really drawn to. I remember sitting down and trying to play
the Rugrats theme-tune, and my auntie came out and said it sounded like angels - at that age
you’re so impressionable that I genuinely believed her!

I’m not 100% sure that this was my very first public performance, but when I was about eight I
entered the Nottinghamshire Music Festival (in what sadly turned out to be its final year), playing
a piece called ‘Knecht Ruprecht’ from Schumann’s Album für das Jugend . It was around then that
I asked my mum if being a pianist was something you could do for a job, and she said
‘Absolutely!’. That was when I started taking it seriously, and I asked if I could study at a proper
music-school; the wonderful Patsy Toh taught me at the Academy’s Junior Department from the
age of 10 to 18, and she was a massive inspiration in all sorts of ways. I also grew up on
recordings of Vladimir Ashkenazy and Martha Argerich, and was convinced I was going to be
exactly like them one day...

Nottingham was fantastic for live classical music when I was growing up, and fortunately it’s
much the same today: the Royal Concert Hall is still standing, and it’s always had a great
programme of visiting artists. My brother saw his heroes including Steven Isserlis, Nicola
Benedetti and Joshua Bell, and I remember seeing the great Stephen Hough there and being so
inspired by his playing. But one of the things that stuck most in my memory was actually opera:
my parents took me to see La traviata when I was very young, and that combination of music
and drama had such a profound effect on me.

And how long was it before your younger siblings started following in your footsteps?

My brothers started instrumental lessons fairly soon after I did, so I don’t really have many
memories of being the only person playing in our house: my childhood was all about everyone
making music together! I remember practising against a backdrop of everyone else practising,
playing chamber music with my brothers and accompanying one other, making arrangements
together and listening to CDs…music was always present in some shape or form. Arranging
pieces was something that always came very naturally to us from a young age, and we still keep
that going whenever time permits.

With such a busy performance-schedule, are you able to carve out much time to pass the
baton onto the next generation of aspiring young musicians?

Yes, definitely! At the moment I’m doing an education project called RPO Resound with the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra, going into primary and secondary schools in London and working with
the children there. I also just got back from Antigua, where for the last five years or so my family
have been involved with a project to create a youth orchestra [the Antigua and Barbuda Youth