Sebastian Manz, international soloist, chamber musician and solo clarinetist with the SWR Symphony Orchestra, had his big breakthrough with his sensational success at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in September 2008. He wins not only first prize in the Clarinet category, which had not been awarded for forty years, but also the coveted Audience Prize and other special prizes. With his partner Martin Klett at the piano, he had also won the German Music Competition just a few months before. Since then, he was awarded thrice with the ECHO Classic Award for his outstanding album releases. For his recording A Bernstein Story from 2019 he received the OPUS Classic Award in October 2020.
In season 2020/2021 Sebastian Manz performs as a soloist with the Göttingen Symphony Orchestra, the Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the Hessian State Orchestra Wiesbaden and the Nuremberg Symphony Orchestra. He is also invited to Japan by the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra as well as by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, USA. As part of a new recording of Copland’s clarinet concerto (Berlin Classics), he will be touring with the Württemberg Chamber Orchestra Heilbronn and chief conductor Case Scaglione.
On the chamber music field, he gives performances together with Robert Neumann, Felix Klieser, Martin Klett and Sebastian Studnitzky as well as with ensembles as the Boulanger Trio, the Danish String Quartet and the Armida Quartett among others. He will be playing at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg and several festivals as the prestigious festival Heidelberger Frühling, the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and the festival Musikalischer Sommer Ostfriesland. In Spring 2021 he is invited to the winter festival of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.
Sebastian Manz demonstrates a unique talent for arranging and composing on his albums and at his concerts. His discography includes numerous awards underscoring Manz’ intuition for details and overarching concepts. The album A Bernstein Story, released in 2019 (Berlin Classics) as a collaboration with Sebastian Studnitzky, presents arrangements as well as original compositions of both musicians and is placed in between classical and jazz music. Manz’ new album with clarinet concertos from Carl Nielsen and Magnus Lindberg was released in the beginning of September 2020 on Berlin Classics and received enthusiastic reviews. For this recording, Magnus Lindberg conducts his clarinet concerto himself.
Being the grandson of the Russian violinist Boris Goldstein and the son of two pianists, born in Hanover in 1986, Manz’s musical roots are in his German-Russian family background. He begins singing in a boys’ choir at the age of six. He first learns the piano, which he plays very well, but soon concentrates on the clarinet after listening to Benny Goodman’s recording of Carl Maria von Weber’s E flat major Concerto, which fascinates him and awakes a longing for the instrument. Among his most important teachers and supporters are the acclaimed clarinetists Sabine Meyer and Rainer Wehle.
Photo: Marco Borggreve
