Jeneba Kanneh-Mason has a passion for curating programmes that cross diverse musical landscapes, and on her debut solo album Fantasie, she takes listeners on a journey that explores connections across different composers’ sound worlds – whether they met, influenced each other, or simply existed in resonance. 

From Claude Debussy, Frédéric Chopin and Alexander Scriabin to Florence Price, Margaret Bonds and William Grant Still, Jeneba presents a programme which is also very personal to her as an artist. “I’ve always loved coming up with quite complex programmes which flow really nicely from one piece to the other and all these works mean a lot to me” she says. “By gathering them here for my debut album, I am not only revealing more of myself as a musician, but also sharing the very different styles of music I grew up listening to.”

William Grant Still’s 1935 Summerland - released today alongside album launch - perfectly illustrates Jeneba’s sense of the composers and their inter-connecting soundworlds.  “I hear a lot of similarity between Still & Debussy” she explains. “I think that they occupy a similar sound world.  ‘Summerland’ is very beautiful and it’s about a soul reaching heaven, and you can definitely hear that in the music.  Like the Debussy Preludes, it’s very tranquil, but also harmonically complex… when you listen to it, you’re transported.”

Frédéric Chopin is central to Jeneba’s repertoire, and she opens with his Second Piano Sonata in B flat minor, Op 35, one of his most powerful works, celebrated for its emotional depth and technical brilliance.  This is followed by The Nocturnes, Op 27, two contrasting pieces that illustrate Chopin’s mastery in evoking complex emotions in music.  “These pieces need to feel as if they’re being improvised” she reveals. “I’ve had to know the notes inside out, so that then when I come to performing it, I can see what happens. With Chopin, I don’t feel like I do the same thing every time.”

From Chopin she takes us into the sound world of Claude Debussy and his Préludes - ‘La fille aux cheveux de lin’ (‘The girl with flaxen hair’ from Book 1) and ‘Bruyères’ (‘Mists’ from Book 2), both of which evoke delicate, atmospheric worlds, where simplicity belies harmonic depth. 

Then in a nod to the Russian tradition, Jeneba plays three works by Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), who, like Chopin, expanded the piano’s expressive capacity.  Two of his Op 11 Preludes, youthful works, and his Sonata No 2 offer her a canvas of harmonic daring and rhythmic freedom. “They both have a beautiful way of making the piano sing” she comments on Chopin & Scriabin. “You can hear Chopin’s influence in Scriabin’s music as he sometimes has these Chopin-esque decorations over the melodies. What I also really love about Scriabin’s music is that it’s very colourful.  When he goes to a specific key, it’s important for him that it’s that key, and not any other key.”

Anchoring her programme’s central section are three African-American composers dear to Jeneba’s heart – Florence Price (1887-1953), Margaret Bonds (1913-1972) and William Grant Still (1895-1978) – each in their way pioneering new modes of musical expression. Jeneba’s affinity for Florence Price is palpable, dating back to her 2021 BBC Proms debut with Price’s Piano Concerto. Jeneba notes “I was very grateful to be able to perform Florence Price’s music at the BBC Proms and I am delighted to have her on my album as well.  In lots of concerts when I have played her Fantasie in E Minor, people have come to me after the performance and said: ‘that was my favourite piece; that’s what I really loved’. I think it’s because her music is very vulnerable and instantly speaks to the heart. She has such a distinct style to which a lot of people can relate. Maybe it’s the passion and her direct connection to the Spirituals that she uses that makes her music so emotional and easy to connect to.”

‘Troubled Water’ by Margaret Bonds – who was a pupil and friend of Florence Price and a champion of her music and who played Price’s Concerto at its premiere in 1934 – is based on the Spiritual ‘Wade in the Water’ and combines syncopations, jazz influences and virtuoso demands. “The Spiritual in ‘Troubled Water’ is ‘Wade in the Water’ and I grew up listening to that when I was very young, so it’s nice to have a piece where you can really hear the pianistic side of Margaret Bonds’ playing and how she’s managed to weave in the Spiritual. There’s this sense of rhythm which follows through the whole piece and it’s a constant pulse underneath the Spiritual. It was an easy choice for me to include Margaret Bonds’ ‘Troubled Water’ on my debut album” Jeneba remarks, emphasizing the rhythmic intensity Bonds brings to her work. 

William Grant Still’s ‘Summerland’ is a vision of paradise, and it suggests to Jeneba a similar musical world to the Debussy Préludes. It offers a delicate, rising hymn to transcendence and is the central movement of his ‘Three Visions’. “It's so beautiful and visual, yet delicate and intimate as well. It starts very simply, and then even though it grows in the left hand and the accompaniment becomes more harmonically complex, it stays in this peaceful Paradise world.   Then the pitch gets higher and higher, as if the soul is lifting to heaven”.

The third youngest of the prodigiously musical Kanneh-Mason family, 22-year-old Jeneba knows instinctively who she is as a musician. “We are a very close-knit family and yet we all have very individual personalities” she explains. “We constantly influence each other, and I have learned a lot from my siblings - and still do. We all have our own voices yet can always turn to each other for support. Isata is six years older than me and she gave me a lot of lessons when I was younger.  She’s always been a massive inspiration for me, and she’s already released many albums, so I feel like I’m following in her footsteps”.

Jeneba Kanneh-Mason is a musician deeply committed to her craft, relishing the challenges of performance and recording and dedicated to her audience, whether in the concert hall or via her recordings and is a talented young artist for whom mastery isn’t just technical but emotional too.