Born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1934, Hermann Baumann began playing the horn at the relatively late age of 17 after beginning his musical career as a singer and jazz drummer.  After a short period of study with the eminent teacher and soloist, Fritz Huth, he played first horn in various orchestras for 12 years.  The starting point of his career as a soloist came when he when he won first prize in the prestigious ARD Radio/Television Competition in Munich in 1964.  Solo engagements, recitals, world touring and recordings all followed and "Hermann Baumann" became household words for horn players throughout the world. He also taught many successful students at the Folkwang School in Essen for some 30 years.  Professor Baumann has mastered the techniques of all the various kinds of horns, from the early Baroque corno da caccia to the modern instrument.  He has done pioneering work not only in Baroque music (his early recordings of the Bach cantatas with their extreme high and difficult passages) but also in the renaissance of performance on the natural horn of the concertos of the classical period.  In 1999, the Historic Brass Society honored him with the Christopher Monk Award. This prize was granted in Paris for Prof. Baumann's outstanding lifelong contribution to music on old instruments. Equally at ease with the modern instrument, he has explored the possibilities of new techniques in present day compositions.  It is not so much his stupendous technique that makes Hermann Baumann's art so fascinating but rather his dynamic adaptability. He plays his horn the way a great singer sings, displaying a multiplicity of nuances of tone and mood. Renowned for the wealth of character in his playing, he brings forth rousing blasts in attack, heroically impassioned expressivity, dramatic singing, naive idyllicism, melancholy cloudiness, solemn gravity but Eulenspiegel impishness and irony, too. This musical mastery and enthusiasm also carries over into his teaching style. Despite suffering a stroke in 1993, he is still touring and performing tirelessly and teaching in master classes throughout the world.