Michael Dreyer was born in Göttingen in 1970 and studied classical guitar at the Musikhochschule Detmold/Münster. In 2005, he founded the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück. The Festival presents the music culture of western Asia, from traditional music to avant-garde, jazz and rock music. The Festival has received worldwide acclaim, not least due to cooperation with the opera houses in Damascus, Cairo, Izmir and Berlin, as well as guest performances in Iran, Iraq, the Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. 

Dreyer took the first Western symphony orchestra to Iran since 1979 and also organized the first performance there of Bach’s St John Passion. In 2013 his team organized an international music festival in Kurdistan/Iraq and in early 2017 he was responsible for the festival “Salam Syria” at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg.

Together with the Argentinian guitar player Hugo Gaido he founded the record label Dreyer Gaido Music Productions, which has produced over 100 CDs so far. The ‘Eastern Voices Edition’ presents recordings with music from the Arab world, from Iran, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Michael Dreyer has worked as author and co-producer for film productions about music in Iran and Xianjiang/China. For his work, he was awarded the Praetorius Music Prize of the State of Lower Saxony in the category “International Music Peace Prize”.