Sean Bennett (born February 14, 1979) is a pianist and psychologist of American origin.

Bennett was born in Hammond, Indiana and initially studied piano from age 5 in the Chicago-area with his mother Grace Bennett, herself a former child organ prodigy. After winning a prize in a Disney song-arranging contest at age 5, he gave his debut concert at the age of seven, playing among other works, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2. He won national acclaim in several original composition competitions including the PTA Reflections Contest by age 10, but quickly turned his efforts to piano performance.

At 14, he gained international attention after becoming the one of the youngest in the world to ever perform and record Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto. As a result of one of his performances, he won the Baxter J. Noyes Award, a secret international piano competition, and a generous sponsor awarded him with a new Steinway concert grand piano and promoted his studies and consultations with Juilliard and Curtis Faculty, including Peter Serkin, Emanuel Ax, Jerome Lowenthal, Seymour Lipkin, Leon Fleisher, Dmitry Paperno, and Gary Graffman.

At 19, after giving 400 concerts with dozens of orchestras, on NPR, regular radio, television, performing for the foreign consulates of 20 countries and Polish President Lech Walesa, and being named a winner in 50 local, national, and international competitions including the Kosciuszko National Chopin Competition and 7 awards from Steinway, Bennett retired from performances and competitions. At this time, he began publicly voicing his belief in the negative effects of competitions on artistry, and set to study piano in isolation.

During the beginning of his period of artistic isolation, Bennett moved to Cambridge, MA where, as a USA TODAY All-USA College Academic Team Member on full scholarship at Harvard University he received a high honors B.A. in Cognitive Neuroscience, Psychology, and Biology advised by MIT linguist Noam Chomsky and psychologist Richard Hackman in 2001. It was during this period that Bennett began the formulation of his important psychological and philosophical ideas, which advocate that through an education in the understanding of the nature of mind, one can transcend traditional boundaries which preclude productive political and social cooperation. Upon graduating from Harvard, Bennett emerged from isolation and, by ear, became one of the first to transcribe, record, and perform the famed Vladimir Horowitz arrangements.

At the same time, in 1999, Bennett began releasing recordings. His first recordings on MP3.com (http://www.MP3.com) and on Vitaminic.com (http://www.Vitaminic.com) were downloaded by 45,000 music enthusiasts beginning in 1999, earning Bennett a rank in the top 10 classical artists among 240,000 on MP3.com and translation of his page into 17 languages. In May and October of 2004, Bennett was ranked as the #1 most downloaded classical artist on the Internet by Download.com (http://www.Download.com/seanbennett), and ranked in the Top Ten for downloads of songs from all musical genres.

Bennett currently completes a Ph.D. at Cambridge University as a Gates Cambridge Scholar becoming the first to study "Musical Imagery Repetition (MIR)," his own term for "why songs repeat in our thoughts." An ardent advocate of the value of broad intellectual studies on artistic improvement, he has also worked investigating the neuroscience of teams for the CIA, has been the Associate Director of MIND, a center for exceptional children, won the Bok Award recognizing the top student evaluation ratings at Harvard for his psychology teaching with bestselling author Steven Pinker, and has worked with Bill Gates Sr. as the peer-elected Gates Scholarship Council Chair to find fresh solutions to approach world problems.

Artistically, Bennett now performs few public recitals, but instead releases many free recordings in order to encourage more individuals to understand, appreciate, and learn the art of music. These recordings, while controversial, have made and continue to make Bennett one of the most downloaded classical artists in the history of the Internet. Bennett currently lives in Chicago.