Sebastian Manz
Sebastian Manz (born 1986) is a German clarinetist. He is the solo clarinetist of the SWR Symphonieorchester and also works as an international soloist and chamber musician. He writes arrangements and music as well.
He was born in Hanover into a musical family. His father is pianist Wolfgang Manz and his mother, Julia Goldstein, is the daughter of violinist Boris Goldstein. Manz joined a boys’ choir and started clarinet lessons at seven. From 1994 to 2002 he won many prizes in Jugend musiziert. At 11 he became a junior student at the Musikhochschule Lübeck and studied there full time from 2003 to 2010 under Sabine Meyer and Reiner Wehle.
In 1999 he toured Poland as a soloist and performed at Expo 2000. He won first prize in clarinet at the ARD International Music Competition in 2008, the prize having been awarded for the first time in 40 years. He has performed with major orchestras and since 2010 has been the solo clarinetist of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra and since 2016 with the SWR Symphonieorchester.
His debut at the Tonhalle Zürich came in 2010 with Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. He has participated in concert series and educational projects, such as Rhapsody in School. In recent seasons he has performed with the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Seville Symphony Orchestra, and has appeared with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York. He also works in jazz, making his own arrangements with Sebastian Studnitzky. He is married with a daughter and lives in Ostfildern, Baden-Württemberg.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 20:32 (CET).