Sheku Kanneh-Mason, one of the brightest young stars on the classical stage, is touring with his pianist sister
There will be no cello serenades for Air Canada by U.K-based cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason any time soon.
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He and his piano-playing sister, Isata, were on their way to perform to a packed house at Toronto’s Koerner Hall on Dec. 11, when Kanneh-Mason was told his cello could not come on the trip, even though he had purchased a seat for it.
But that fame didn’t help him in his struggles with Air Canada.
According to the Air Canada musical instruments policy, musicians will “receive a 50% discount on any published fare (including the lowest available fare) to accommodate the instrument in the same cabin you are travelling in.” But there’s a caveat.
Still, Kanneh-Mason frustrated with Air Canada took to his social media accounts to express his anoyance: “We can only dream of a time when all airlines have a standardised, global and carefully considered approach to the carriage of precious instruments that are booked to travel in the cabin.”
Kanneh-Mason said he and his sister were “deeply saddened not to be able to perform for you at Koerner Hall last night.… First we had delays, then a cancellation, and the day concluded by being denied boarding with the cello – despite having a confirmed seat for it – on a new, final flight into Toronto.”
The Koerner Hall concert was called off and rescheduled for June 2024.
His case is not isolated.
And Kanneh-Mason faced similar turbulence in September 2023, when his cello was unexpectedly denied boarding on a British Airways flight to London from Bucharest.
He took to social media then, too, writing on X: “Sadly, this is a common problem for me and my fellow professional musicians who travel with instruments that, for many reasons, cannot go in the hold. Why are there these inconsistencies? We need some sort of protocol that we can refer to when we hit these problems, So @British_Airways (and there are other airlines who do this too) shall we sit down and try to work something out, please?”
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