Sheku Kanneh-Mason MBE (born 4 April 1999) is a British cellist who won the 2016 BBC Young Musician award. He was the first black musician to win the competition since its launch in 1978. He played at the wedding of Prince Harry to Meghan Markle on 19 May 2018 under the direction of Christopher Warren-Green. Also performing at the wedding was the traditional choir of St. George's Chapel led by James Vivian and gospel performers the Kingdom Choir, conducted by Karen Gibson. As of 2021, Kanneh-Mason plays a Matteo Goffriller cello that was made in 1700.

Kanneh-Mason was born in Bahrain and grew up in Nottingham, England. He was born to Stuart Mason, from London, a luxury hotel business manager of Antiguan descent, and Dr. Kadiatu Kanneh, from Sierra Leone, a former lecturer at the University of Birmingham and author of the 2020 book House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons.

The third of seven children, he began learning the cello at the age of six with Sarah Huson-Whyte, having briefly played the violin. His love for the cello started when he saw his sister perform in 'Stringwise', an annual weekend course for young Nottingham string players, run by the local music charity Music for Everyone. He then switched from violin to cello and went on to take part in Music for Everyone's Stringwise courses, impressing their conductors with his ability to play everything from memory. At the age of nine, he passed the Grade 8 cello examination with the highest marks in the UK, and won the Marguerite Swan Memorial Prize. Also aged nine he won an ABRSM junior scholarship to join the Junior Academy of the Royal Academy of Music, where he was tutored by Ben Davies.

Kanneh-Mason received his non-specialist education as a pupil at the Trinity School, Nottingham, where he studied for A-levels in Music, Maths and Physics. He later became a student of Hannah Roberts at the Royal Academy of Music in London. He has cited cellists Jacqueline du Pré and Mstislav Rostropovich as his "musical heroes", alongside Bob Marley. He also listens to jazz, hip-hop from the 1990s and early 2000s, and Brazilian music.

In 2015, he and his siblings were competitors on Britain's Got Talent as The Kanneh-Masons. He won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year contest in May 2016, later telling The Observer that appearing on Britain's Got Talent had been "a good experience for getting used to performing in front of lots of people, with cameras and interviews. When it came to BBC Young Musician there were fewer cameras so I wasn't fazed at all."

In June 2016, Kanneh-Mason signed a deal for worldwide general management with the London-based boutique agency Enticott Music Management, and went on to sign a major recording contract with the classical music label Decca Classics in November 2016. The record deal was signed on board a Nottingham City Transport bus which the local authority had named in his honour after Kanneh-Mason won the BBC Young Musician contest. The label announced that his first recording would feature the piece with which he won the BBC's Young Musician of the Year contest, Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No.1.

Kanneh-Mason was a member of the Chineke! Orchestra, which was founded by Chi-chi Nwanoku for black and minority ethnic classical musicians; his sister Isata Kanneh-Mason and brother Braimah are also members. In 2016, Kanneh-Mason told The Guardian's Tom Service that:

Chineke! is a really inspiring project. I rarely go to a concert and see that kind of diversity in the orchestra. Or in the audience. Having the orchestra will definitely change the culture. It's so important we're celebrating music by black composers, too, like the piece by Chevalier de Saint-Georges we're playing in September.