Welcome to my website! My name is Sebastiaan, and this site will give you a little peek inside my head. You can explore it and get an idea of the different activities that fill my days, and the passions that drive me. My head can be a somewhat chaotic space at times, so if you need some more clarity there is a filter function at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!
Trombonist Sebastiaan Kemner is always looking to acquaint audiences with the beauty and versatility of his instrument. He travels to all the corners of the world to perform as a soloist and chamber musician, and to give masterclasses. He enjoys engaging in unexpected, often boundary crossing, collaborations, which lead to exciting new concert programmes. As an orchestral musician he played extensively with internationally renowned orchestras, such as the Berlin Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra. In 2018 Sebastiaan was appointed Professor of Trombone at the Royal Conservatory in The Netherlands.
Next to the intensive collaboration with his duo partner, pianist Andrea Vasi, Sebastiaan is a member of musical collective Ludwig (winning a Grammy Award for their first CD Crazy Girl Crazy), and of the New Trombone Collective, which also organises the biennial European Trombone Festival Slide Factory. As one of the cofounders and artistic director of the new music platform Lonelinoise, Sebastiaan gets the chance to experiment extensively with contemporary classical music, one of his greatest passions. The mission of Lonelinoise is to welcome audiences into the weird and wondrous world of new music, and to find new ways of communicating its emotion and power to the listeners.
Collaborations with composers are an important part of the continuous search for new repertoire. Many new pieces have been written for Sebastiaan, for instance by Mike Svoboda, Theo Verbey, Nicholas Moroz, Trevor Grahl, Martijn Padding and Milika Kishino. Furthermore, Sebastiaan is always arranging existing repertoire, and searching for forgotten music. The concert programmes that emanate from this are often praised for their originality and unity, and for bringing out the lyrical side of the trombone. In 2010 he was named Young Musician of the Year Award, and since then he has won numerous first prizes at renowned international competitions, amongst others in New York (International Trombone Association) and Düsseldorf (Aeolus Wind Competition). The singing approach to his instrument was well received by the members of the jury of the Dutch Music Award (Nederlandse Muziekprijs), the highest distinction given out by the Dutch government to outstanding musicians, which Sebastiaan received in 2021.
Sebastiaan always continues to develop himself as a musician, and in order to explore the academic side of his profession further he obtained a master’s degree in musicology from the University of Oxford in 2019, and is currently working on his PhD. Before that, he was part of the prestigious Herbert von Karajan Akademie der Berliner Philharmoniker, and in 2015 he finished his master studies with the highest distinction at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, where he studied with Jörgen van Rijen, Pierre Volders and Remko de Jager.
