Shu

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Shu grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, with the strumming of his fathers guitar and simple Swahili songs about love and loss serving as his first musical backdrop. At the age of seven, he began training as a classical pianist, going on to win numerous national awards. Shu was also heavily involved in live theater, playing lead roles and winning best actor awards in national festivals. Despite this instrumental and stage success, however, Shu began to realize that singing and songwriting were where his heart lay. He began seriously creating and performing original music as a teenager, leading several all-male a cappella groups while also excelling academically through high school and into his college years at Harvard. In Boston, Shu continued cutting his musical teeth, becoming a sought-after songwriter, arranger, soloist and accompanist, and serving as the assistant musical director of Harvards premier choir for black music, the Kuumba Singers. As a live performer, Shu's stage presence, personality, songs and virtuosic, heart-felt shows have won him avid fans around the world, whether playing with a full band or more intimately on self-accompanied piano. In his homebase of New York, Shu has played headlining shows to full houses at premier venues like S.O.B.'s, Joe's Pub, The Blue Note and The Cutting Room. Shu has also taken his music on the road to Atlanta, Washington DC, Boston and Philadelphia, sharing the stage with such notable names as Donnie and Raheem Devaughn. Internationally, Shu has played standing-room-only headlining shows in Kenya and England. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Shu has always had an active academic life. In 2003, he successfully competed for the Rhodes Scholarship to study Material Anthropology at Oxford, and left Brooklyn for England after wrapping up post-production for SHUSIC in October 2004. After a year at Oxford, Shu has now returned to New York to pursue music full time, having successfully completed his masters thesis on Contemporary African Art and graduating with Distinction. He is continuing to play shows and grow his audience in New York and colleges in the surrounding areas, and will soon be heading to Europe and Japan to keep building upon SHUSIC's early momentum in those territories. With his abundance of talent and charisma, Shu is causing a serious stir and breathing some exciting new air into contemporary R&B/Soul music.