The celebrated British cellist traces his greatest inspirations, from Bob Marley to Mendelssohn, in ‘My Favourite Melodies,’ streaming June 21
At 27, Sheku Kanneh-Mason MBE has already spent a decade rewriting the record books in classical music. Now he is inviting audiences into his world in a new documentary streaming exclusively on Marquee TV from June 21, 2026.
My Favourite Melodies follows the celebrated British cellist as he plays and reflects on the music that has shaped him, spanning traditional Welsh compositions, Bob Marley, Leonard Cohen, hip-hop, jazz, and 19th century composers including Franz Liszt and Felix Mendelssohn. True to his reputation for spontaneity, Sheku breaks into impromptu performances mid-conversation throughout the film, shot in Peckham, the South London neighbourhood he calls home.
“It’s a wonderful place, full of a variety of really beautiful, interesting, and soulful things,” he says of Peckham. “I love this neighbourhood, I love exploring it. It’s everchanging, ever growing, evolving, and ever interesting.”
Among the documentary’s most moving sequences is a performance of Mendelssohn’s Song Without Words as a duet with his pianist sister Isata Kanneh-Mason, a natural pairing for a family whose musical story has captivated audiences for over a decade. Archival footage also surfaces a charming early chapter: a young Sheku at nine, alongside siblings Isata at eleven and Braimah at ten, performing together on children’s television show Yo Gabba Gabba.
Sheku is the third of seven Kanneh-Mason siblings, all of whom play violin, piano, or cello. The family first captured the public imagination in 2015 when six of them performed on Britain’s Got Talent. They have since released two critically acclaimed albums on Decca Classics, winning Best Classical Artist at the Global Awards in 2021 for their debut album Carnival.
Sheku’s own milestones are equally remarkable. In 2016 he became the first Black musician to win the BBC Young Musician Award since the competition launched in 1978, while also performing with Chineke! Orchestra, the first professional orchestra in Europe composed of a majority of Black and ethnic minority musicians. In 2018, his performance at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was watched live by an estimated audience of hundreds of millions. And in 2020, his album Elgar made him the first cellist ever to reach the top ten of the UK album charts, and the first classical musician to do so since Nigel Kennedy.
My Favourite Melodies is produced by C Major Entertainment and represents Sheku’s return to the screen following a string of award-winning BBC documentaries with his family, which have earned two Royal Television Society Awards.
Sheku Kanneh-Mason: My Favourite Melodies streams exclusively on Marquee TV from June 21, 2026.