Hello friends

I just found out that one of the best Yamaha keyboard artist, Peter Baartmans sudden passing, after a short illness.

He traveled all over the world, spoke several languages, doing Demos and Clinics.
Besides being an incredible player, he was such a nice person, I had the great opportunity to have share many moments at many NAMM shows.

Always willing to share tips, etc....he will be missed.

Manuel Dorantes

sad news ,so talented key demonstrator and very nice person

I always admired him and over the years, learned a lot from his worldwide demos. He will be greatly missed.

Gary

Hi Manuel,

I feel so sad hearing about Peter Baartmans passing away so soon.

Peter was my inspiration. I would scour the internet watching all his demo videos of him playing Yamaha Arrangers and Digital Pianos. He was a master at this trade. He was the face of Yamaha.

I heard Peter was an independent contractor working for Yamaha Corporation. Being trained as a musician from a young age he was incredibly talented. His showmanship and ability to entertain his audience while explaining technical features of each Yamaha product was unparalleled.

Peter was a gifted musician who brought a smile of happiness and wonder to his audience whenever he played on any keyboard.

May his soul rest in peace.

Here are a few of Peter’s extraordinary keyboard demos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcpbSKUz0Bg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUCOVdtRF4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr8guzkFyBA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGHp5bAlPqc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl4TzUdBF5o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArNJ8NtPcas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc7fht_2Sxs

RIP Peter,

I was fortunate enough to meet you and hear you play on several occasions including last December

My sincere condolences to your loved ones.

Kind regards,

Russ

Sad news-extremely talented man.

A piece of arranger history has left us. Peter’s work with Yamaha defined our expectations from Yamaha arrangers.

He will be missed. 😢

Another loss, which unfortunately is getting more frequent these days, (Nobody's getting younger).
He was a fantastic player and attended many organ & keyboard festivals in Europe for Yamaha, however I personally preferred his Kurtzweil days over Yamaha.
RIP

Bill

He will be definitely missed !

I actually knew very little about who Baartmans was when I was invited to become his "student" for a few day – I think that a Russian department of Yamaha just was very short of candidates, so they saw my video on social media that I posted in their group and contacted me. He was teaching us to be demonstrators like himself, but it was prior to 2014, then the mess between Russia and Ukraine started and Yamaha didn't proceed with that project (nevertheless Yamaha Music still officially works in Russia). We even dined together with him and other students. But I kept in mind that he was just doing his job there; I couldn't even get his personal email (understandable, although that could be a doing of a Russian department);
Still, I had a hope that I would meet him again somewhere;
Well, certainly it's sad on many levels,
Maybe he's playing music on some new level right now; but we still have to do the best with what we got