Sebastian Manz, international soloist, chamber musician and principal clarinettist of the SWR Symphony Orchestra, celebrated his big breakthrough in 2008 at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich. There he won 1st prize in the clarinet category, which had not been awarded in this category for 40 years, as well as the coveted Audience Prize and other special prizes. Previously, he won the German Music Competition with his piano partner Martin Klett. Since then, he has received the ECHO KLASSIK three times for outstanding CD recordings as well as the coveted Emerging Artist Award in New York. For his 2019 album A Bernstein Story, he received the OPUS KLASSIK in the category “Classical Music without Borders” in October 2020.
In addition to solo engagements in Germany (including with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the Hessisches Staatsorchester Wiesbaden and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra), he will be touring in Japan in the 2020/2021 season with both the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, USA. He will also tour with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and principal conductor Case Scaglione as part of a newly released recording of Aaron Copland’s Clarinet Concerto on the Berlin Classics label. With chamber music partners such as Robert Neumann, Felix Klieser, Martin Klett and Sebastian Studnitzky, as well as with ensembles such as the Boulanger Trio, the Danish String Quartet and the Armida Quartet, Sebastian Manz is a welcome guest on renowned stages, including the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, as well as at various festivals such as the Heidelberger Frühling, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Musiksommer Ostfriesland and the Fränkischer Musiksommer. In spring 2021 he is invited to the Winter Festival of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.
Sebastian Manz regularly demonstrates his enthusiasm for arranging and composing in concerts as well as within his award-winning discography. The CD A Bernstein Story (Berlin Classics), which he recorded together with jazz musician Sebastian Studnitzky and was released in August 2019, contains arrangements as well as original compositions by the musicians and has delighted both the classical and jazz music scenes. The Mannheimer Morgen described the album as “a bubbling laboratory with highly inspiring musical experiments” and attested to “boundless listening pleasure”. In May 2020, the CD Father Copland with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn under Case Scaglione was released by Berlin Classics; the new album with the clarinet concertos by Carl Nielsen and Magnus Lindberg was also released by Berlin Classics at the beginning of September 2020 and received rave reviews. Here, Marcus Lindberg himself stands at the conductor’s podium for his concerto.
The grandson of Russian violinist Boris Goldstein, the son of two pianists born in Hanover in 1986 finds his musical roots in his German-Russian family home. At the age of six, Sebastian Manz sang in the boys’ choir, first learned to play the piano, but soon concentrated on the clarinet. Ever since he first heard Benny Goodman’s recording of the E-flat major concerto by Carl Maria von Weber, he has harboured a fascination for the instrument. No less than Sabine Meyer and Rainer Wehle are among his most important teachers and patrons.

10/2020