Nicola Benedetti, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Benjamin Grosvenor, Philharmonia Orchestra & Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Biography Nicola Benedetti, Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Benjamin Grosvenor, Philharmonia Orchestra & Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Nicola Benedetti
s one of the most sought-after violinists of her generation. Her ability to captivate audiences and her wide appeal as an advocate for classical music has made her one of the most influential artists of today.
Nicola begins her 2024-2025 season with a performance of the Marsalis Violin Concerto with the Belgian National Orchestra in a programme that includes Marsalis’ Fourth Symphony ‘The Jungle’ with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. She will return to the London Symphony Orchestra to perform the MacMillan Violin Concerto with Gianandrea Noseda and will close the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s season playing the Brahms Violin Concerto conducted by Maxim Emelyanychev.
Winner of the GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo in 2020, as well as Best Female Artist at both 2012 and 2013 Classical BRIT Awards, Nicola records exclusively for Decca (Universal Music). Her latest recordings of Vivaldi Concerti and Elgar’s Violin Concerto entered at number one in the UK’s Official Classical Album Chart. Other recent recordings include her GRAMMY award-winning album written especially for her by jazz musician Wynton Marsalis: Violin Concerto in D and Fiddle Dance Suite for Solo Violin. In 2021, BBC Music Magazine named her “Personality of the Year” for her online support of many young musicians during the pandemic.
Nicola has always been a dedicated, passionate ambassador and leader in music education and her commitment was underlined in 2019 when she established The Benedetti Foundation (benedettifoundation.org). The Foundation delivers transformative experiences through mass music events and unites those who believe music is integral to life’s education. The Foundation believes in the strength of music and the power of mass inspirational moments to connect cultures and communities through combining excellence and inclusivity, tradition and innovation and meaningful collaboration. In its first four years, the Foundation has worked with close to 70,000 participants of all ages and levels, instrumentalists and non-instrumentalists alike, across 105 countries. Its free online educational video resources: ‘With Nicky’ and other Foundation videos have had over 6 million views.
Nicola was appointed a CBE in 2019, awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music (2017), and an MBE in 2013. In addition, Nicola holds the positions of Vice President (National Children’s Orchestras), Big Sister (Sistema Scotland), Patron (National Youth Orchestras of Scotland’s Junior Orchestra, Music in Secondary Schools Trust and Junior Conservatoire at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland).
In October 2022, Nicola became the Festival Director of the Edinburgh International Festival. In taking the role she became both the first Scottish and the first female Festival Director since the Festival began in 1947.
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Sheku Kanneh-Mason
Sheku’s mission is to make music accessible to all, whether that’s performing for children in a school hall, at an underground club, or in the world’s leading concert venues. Highlights of the 24/25 season include the Konzerthaus Berlin as Artist in Residence, Lucerne Festival 2024 as Artiste Étoile, Czech Philharmonic in Prague and on tour with both Jakub Hrůša and Semyon Bychkov, Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra with Paavo Järvi, WDR Symphony Cologne with Cristian Măcelaru, Orchestre National de Lyon with Leonard Slatkin, Sinfonia of London with John Wilson on tour in the UK, SWR Symphony Stuttgart with Christoph Eschenbach, Camerata Salzburg on tour, Pittsburgh Symphony with Manfred Honeck, New World Symphony with Stéphane Denève, Philadelphia Orchestra with Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and City of Birmingham Symphony with Kazuki Yamada.
With his pianist sister, Isata, he makes his duo recital debut in recital debut at New York’s Carnegie Hall Stern Auditorium in a programme featuring a newly commissioned piece by Natalie Klouda. The pair also appear on tour in Bordeaux, Rome, Cincinnati, Toronto, Philadelphia, Dublin, Munich, Berlin, Antwerp, Haarlem, the Rheingau Festival, and at London’s Wigmore Hall. Sheku also appears with duo partners guitarist Plinio Fernandes, and jazz pianist Harry Baker.
Since his debut in 2017, Sheku has performed every summer at the BBC Proms, including as soloist at the 2023 Last Night of the Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Marin Alsop. In 2024, his family-friendly Proms appearances with the Fantasia Orchestra were designed to introduce orchestral classical music to a new generation of music lovers. Sheku also returns to Antigua, where he has family connections, as an ambassador for the Antigua and Barbuda Youth Symphony Orchestra.
A Decca Classics recording artist, Sheku appears on the May 2024 recording of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto alongside Nicola Benedetti, Benjamin Grosvenor, and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Santtu-Matias Rouvali. His 2022 album, Song, showcases his innately lyrical playing in a wide and varied range of arrangements and collaborations. Sheku’s 2020 album Elgar reached No. 8 in the overall Official UK Album Chart, making him the first ever cellist to reach the UK Top 10. Sheet music collections of his performance repertoire along with his own arrangements and compositions are published by Faber.
Sheku is a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Hannah Roberts and in May 2022 was appointed as the Academy’s first Menuhin Visiting Professor of Performance Mentoring. In 2024 he accepted the role as patron of UK Music Masters and remains an ambassador for both Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Future Talent. Sheku was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year’s Honours List. After winning the BBC Young Musician competition in 2016, Sheku’s performance at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex at Windsor Castle in 2018 was watched by two billion people worldwide. He plays a Matteo Goffriller cello from 1700 which is on indefinite loan to him.
Gerald Finley
is a Grammy Award-winning singer and dramatic interpreter of our time, with celebrated performances at the world’s major opera and concert venues and recordings on CD and DVD with major labels in a wide variety of repertoire. Mr Finley’s extensive career is devoted to the complete spectrum of vocal art, encompassing operatic, orchestral and song repertoire, collaborating with the greatest composers, orchestras and conductors.
His career initially focussed on the music of Mozart; his Don Giovanni and Count in Le nozze di Figaro have been heard live and broadcast throughout the world. His expanding repertoire soon encompassed what are now signature roles including Bluebeard, Guillaume Tell, J. Robert Oppenheimer in John Adam’s Dr. Atomic, and Jaufré Rudel in Saariaho’s L’amour de loin. He created Harry Heegan in Mark Anthony Turnage’s The Silver Tassie.
In recent years, critical successes have been in the Wagner and Verdi repertoire: as Hans Sachs at the Glyndebourne Festival and l’Opéra de Paris, Amfortas in Parsifal at Royal Opera Covent Garden, Wolfram at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Verdi’s Falstaff at the Canadian Opera (for which he won a DORA Award), as a “peerless” Iago in Otello with Sir Colin Davis and the LSO (LSO Live), Royal Opera in Japan, and Bavarian State Opera, and Canadian opera and in the title role in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell with Accademia di Santa Cecilia and Sir Antonio Pappano (EMI) and at the Royal Opera Covent Garden. His other important roles include Scarpia, Golaud, Eugene Onegin and Nick Shadow. In contemporary opera, Mr Finley has excelled in creating leading roles, most notably J. Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams’ Doctor Atomic (New York Met, ENO London, San Francisco, Chicago and Amsterdam), as Harry Heegan in Turnage’s The Silver Tassie at ENO, Howard K. Stern in Turnage’s Anna Nicole at Covent Garden and Jaufré Rudel in Kaija Saariaho’s L’amour de loin. He created the role of Mr Fox in Tobias Picker’s Fantastic Mr Fox at L.A. Opera. Concert appearances include the title role in Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero (New York Phil with Alan Gilbert and the BRSO) and Chou en Lai in Adams’ Nixon in China with the BBC Symphony at the BBC Proms conducted by the composer. His Arias in English CD on the Chandos label received the Canadian Juno Award for Best Album in Vocal Performance. In 2012, the DVD release of Doctor Atomic in which Gerald Finley appeared as J. Robert Oppenheimer was awarded the Grammy for ‘Best Opera Recording’.
Mr Finley’s concert work is a vital part of his flourishing career with recent appearances with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic the London Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Mahler Chamber, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. A rediscovered version of Shostakovich’s “English Poets” along with that composer’s orchestral cycle, Michelangelo Sonnets, was recorded by Mr Finley and the Helsinki Philharmonic on the Ondine label and received international critical acclaim. Modern day composers have written extensively for Mr. Finley and include Peter Lieberson (“Songs of Love and Sorrow” with the Boston Symphony and recorded by Ondine with the Helsinki Radio Orchestra), Mark Anthony Turnage (“When I woke” with the LPO and Vladimir Jurowski), Huw Watkins, Julian Philips, Kaija Saariaho (“True Fire” with the L.A. Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel), and Einojuhani Rautavaara (“Rubáiyát” with the Helsinki Philharmonic).
As a celebrated song recitalist, he works regularly with pianist Julius Drake. Their many appearances throughout the world include the Schubertiade, a residency at the Wigmore Hall, New York’s Carnegie-Zankel Hall and lauded appearances at the festivals of Salzburg, Edinburgh, and Tanglewood. He has also performed with Sir Antonio Pappano, Malcolm Martineau, Simon Lepper and Michael McMahon.
Mr Finley’s many solo recital CD releases have been devoted to complete songs of Barber, Britten, Duparc, Ives, Liszt, Ravel and Schumann’s song cycles “Dichterliebe” and “Liederkreis Op. 24 & 39”. With a continuing partnership with Julius Drake on the Hyperion label, all have been critically acclaimed, including an unprecedented three Gramophone Awards in the Solo Vocal category. Their release of Schubert’s Winterreise won a Canadian Juno Award in 2015. This season sees the completion of their Hyperion Schubert trilogy with the release of Die schöne Müllerin.
Highlights of recent appearances include the 2018 BBC Last Night of the Proms where he performed a range of songs including Stanford’s Songs of the Sea and ‘Soliloquy’ from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel, Iago in a new production of Otello at the Bayerische Staatsoper and the Canadian Opera Company, the title role in Bluebeard’s Castle at the Metropolitan Opera, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony conducted by Bernard Haitink in Munich, and at the Salzburg Festival with Riccardo Muti. His recital work took him to the Wigmore Hall, Middle Temple Hall, and the NDR Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.
His current season has him returning to the title role in Le nozze di Figaro at the Berlin State Opera with Daniel Barenboim, the opening gala concert at the Paris Opera with Gustavo Dudamel, Bluebeard with l’Orchestre de Paris and Esa-Pekka Salonen and also the Vienna Symphony with Marin Alsop, the title role in Falstaff at the Vienna State Opera, recitals in Vienna, Prague, London and Canada and the USA with a world premiere of a new work by Mark Anthony Turnage Without Ceremony.
As part of his dedication to preserving and enhancing the singing tradition, he gives masterclasses throughout the world most recently at the Juilliard School of Music, and continues to work with the Jette Parker Young Artists’ Program at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, the National Opera Studio, and the Lindemann Program at the Met.
He was born in Montreal, began singing as a chorister in Ottawa, Canada, and completed his musical studies in the UK at the Royal College of Music, King’s College, Cambridge, and the National Opera Studio. He is a Fellow and Visiting Professor at the Royal College of Music. In 2014 he climbed Kilimanjaro for the charity Help Musicians UK. In 2017 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire and had previously been appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. Mr Finley also features on a Canadian stamp celebrating Canadians in opera.
Benjamin Grosvenor
is internationally recognized for his sonorous lyricism and understated brilliance at the keyboard. His virtuosic interpretations are underpinned by a unique balance of technical mastery and intense musicality. Grosvenor is regarded as one of the most important pianists to emerge in several decades, with Gramophone recently acknowledging him as one of the top 50 pianists ever on record.
Concerto highlights of the 2024/2025 season include debuts with Bamberg and NHK Symphony Orchestrasalongside a UK tour with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Karina Canellakis and returns to Montreal, Utah, Seattle, Bern, Dallas, BBC, and City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestras, and the Royal Northern Sinfonia. Grosvenor is also a featured artist at the Theatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, appearing for both concerto and solo recital performances during the same week in February 2025.
A celebrated recitalist, this season Grosvenor performs across the world a programme featuring Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition including at Shanghai Symphony Hall, Muza Kawasaki, National Concert Hall, Taipei, Princeton University Concerts, Unione Musicale de Torino, and London’s Wigmore Hall.
Highlights of recent seasons include successful debuts with the Chicago Symphony and Cleveland orchestras, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, RSO Wien at the BBC Proms, Beethoven piano concertos 3 and 4 with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with conductor Maxim Emelyanychev at the Festival Radio France, varied projects as Artist in Residence at the Sage Gateshead in the 2022/2023 season, the Wigmore Hall in 2021/2022, and at Radio France in 2000/2021. A renowned interpreter of Chopin, in the 2022/2023 season he performed both concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. In recital he has performed at Konzerthaus Berlin, Chicago Symphony Centre, Luxembourg Philharmonie, Frankfurter Hof Mainz as part of the SWR2 International Piano Series, ‘Chopin and his Europe’ Festival in Warsaw, La Roque, Barbican Centre, Southbank Centre, Spivey Hall, Washington’s Kennedy Center, New York’s Carnegie Hall, and 92nd Street Y.
A keen chamber musician, Benjamin regularly works with renowned ensembles — the Modigliani Quartet and Doric Quartet amongst them — and in chamber projects with other esteemed soloists Kian Soltani, Timothy Ridout, and Hyeyoon Park, including a forthcoming European tour of Strauss and Brahms Piano Quartet No. 3 with performances at Luxembourg Philharmonie, the Southbank Centre, and Palau de la Musica Barcelona.
In 2011 Benjamin signed to Decca Classics, becoming the youngest British musician ever — and the first British pianist in almost sixty years — to do so. His recent solo release of ‘Schumann and Brahms’ featuring Kreisleriana was praised as a “masterpiece” (Le Devoir), selected as Gramophone Editor’s Choice, and awarded Diapason d’or de l’année and CHOC Classica de l’année 2023. In 2020 he released Chopin piano concertos 1 and 2 with Elim Chan and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, which received the Gramophone Concerto Award and a Diapason d’Or de L’Année, with Diapason’s critic declaring the recording “a version to rank among the best, and confirmation of an extraordinary artist.” The renewal of his partnership with Decca in 2021 coincided with the release of Benjamin’s album of Liszt, awarded Chocs de l’année and Prix de Caecilia. The most recent addition to Grosvenor’s impressive discography includes Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, alongside Nicola Benedetti and Sheku Kanneh-Mason, and folk song settings with celebrated baritone Gerald Finley.
He was invited to perform at the First Night of the 2011 BBC Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, where he has since become a regular over the last decades, including at the last night of the Proms with Marin Alsop and the BBC Symphony Orchestra in 2015. He performed Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Paavo Järvi in 2020, a solo recital in 2023, and Busoni’s monumental Piano Concerto in 2024.
Grosvenor has received Gramophone’s ‘Young Artist of the Year’, a Classical Brit Critics’ Award, UK Critics’ Circle Award for Exceptional Young Talent, and a Diapason d’Or Jeune Talent Award. He has been featured in two BBC television documentaries, on BBC Breakfast, Front Row, and CNN’s ‘Human to Hero’ series. In 2016 he became the inaugural recipient of The Ronnie and Lawrence Ackman Classical Piano Prize with the New York Philharmonic.
Following studies at the Royal Academy of Music, he graduated in 2012 with the ‘Queen’s Commendation for Excellence’ and in 2016 was awarded a RAM Fellowship. Benjamin is an Ambassador of Music Masters, a charity dedicated to making music education accessible to all children regardless of their background, championing diversity and inclusion.
