Sebastian Bartmann was born in Essen in 1979. His musical education has always been various. So his first teacher, Hartwig Diehl (Arnsberg), has encouraged him equally in the fields of piano playing, organ playing and the art of improvisation. Until the beginning of his studies he was taught by Siegbert Rampe (Gummersbach). He has early had experiences as a composer and wrote often the incidental music for the theatre ensemble at school. Meanwhile he has discovered for himself the world of electronic sounds, by which he is working on over and over again. In Stuttgart he has studied church music (organ with Ludger Lohmann, improvisation with Willibald Bezler), piano (with André Marchand) and piano duo (with Hans-Peter and Volker Stenzl).

Sebastian Bartmann is the winner of several national and international music prizes. In 1997 he was awarded a first organ prize at the competition “Jugend musiziert” on a national level. One year later he got an award of the Rotary Club Arnsberg. In March 2002 he was a prizewinner including the special prize for contemporary music at the piano competition of Bayreuth. As a piano duo together with Barbara Rieder, they won also a prize including the special prize for contemporary music at the international chamber music competition “Palma d´oro” (Italy). At the piano competition of Regensburg in 2004, he won the first prize. In September 2005, the piano duo (duo imPuls) got the third prize at the international duo competition in Bialystok (Poland). Furthermore the University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart awarded to Sebastian Bartmann the second prize for Piano Pedagogics 2005. A year ago duo imPuls won the German Music Competition in the category piano duo. They got a scholarship of the German Music Council and were admitted to the Federal Selection “Concerts of Young Artists”. Moreover they were chosen as Bruno-Frey-prizewinners in 2006.

Sebastian Bartmann is scholarship holder of the Richard-Wagner-Society, the Yehudi-Menuhin-Foundation “Live music now!” and the Study Foundation of German People.

Together with Barbara Rieder, he took part in a television program of the SWR. In September 2004 he was the organ player of a television mass in the cathedral of Neheim, broadcasted by the ZDF.

He took part in master classes for piano with Konrad Elser, Christian Ivaldi, Boris Lvov and Lilya Zilberstein, for organ with Michael Radulesco, Harald Vogel, Jean-Claude Zehnder and Wolfgang Zerer, for piano duo with the duos Yaara Tal & Andreas Groethuysen and Aglika Genova & Ljuben Dimitrov.

During his studies he has worked intensively on historical keyboard instruments and got artistic inspiration by Robert Hill, Bernhard Klapprott, Ton Koopman and Andrea Marcon. He tries to slip ideas of the practice of clavichord-, harpsichord, organ-, and pianoforte playing in his interpretations on the modern grandpiano.

His also focuses on the art of improvisation, as an organ player as well as an pianist. In this field he visited master classes of Frédéric Blanc, Thierry Escaich, Peter Planyavsky and Wolfgang Seifen. He took part in several projects, for example with narrators, actors, dancers and choires. Apart from Jazz improvisations and classical stylistic copies, he is developing his own personality more and more. In October 2004 he won the international competition for improvisation including the prize of the audience in Schlägl (Austria).

Recently he played in the new “ensemble perspektiv” (contemporary music), conducted by Sian Edwards and Mauricio Kagel, concerts in Bremen, Berlin, Ljubljana, Rome, Brussels and Lisbon.