This is less a memoir and more a thoughtful, practical, commonsense guide for budding musicians and their families, built on the scaffolding of 26-year-old award-winning British cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason‘s formative musical experiences and rise to fame following his win as the 2016 BBC Young Musician of the Year. Just two years later, he would play at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Born in Nottingham in 1999 to parents of Antiguan and Sierra Leonean descent, Kanneh-Mason is the third of seven children and started learning cello at age six. At nine, he achieved the highest marks in the UK for his Grade 8 cello exam and won an ABRSM Junior Scholarship to the Junior Academy of London’s Royal Academy of Music, later becoming a student of Hannah Roberts at the Royal Academy. He signed with Decca in 2016, regularly appears at the BBC Proms, and serves as a patron or ambassador for several music charities and educational initiatives. In 2020, he was awarded an MBE for services to music.

As he writes, growing up in a noisy household, he was surrounded by diverse musical influences from an early age....