 Barton was jointly selected with pianist Tamara Anna Cislowska for the 2004 Freedman Fellowship for Classical Music by the Music Council of Australia.In 2004, he was awarded the Brisbane Lord Mayor's Young and Emerging Artists' Fellowship, and the following year he was a metropolitan finalist for the Suncorp Young Queenslander of the Year Award.He was nominated in the ARIA Music Awards of 2004 for Best Classical Album with ABC Classics recording "Songs of Sea and Sky".