About us

Morgenland Festival Osnabrück has been dedicated to the captivating music cultures of the MENA, Caucasus and Central Asian regions since 2005, encompassing traditional music, classical, avant-garde, jazz and rock genres. With its focus on regions that often evoke clichéd images (positive and negative), the festival aims to counteract these stereotypes by presenting authentic experiences.

The festival has received extensive press coverage, including from the BBC, CNN, ARTE, 3Sat, ARD, the Tehran Times, the Hindu Post, Syria Times, Der Spiegel, Stern, FAZ, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian.

Morgenland Festival Osnabrück has also organised concerts, festivals, choir and orchestra projects in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkey. In 2013, it invited 65 musicians to Iraqi Kurdistan for a festival, with performances taking place in Erbil and Sulaimaniya. Other notable festival highlights include Iran’s first Western symphony orchestra performance since 1979 (in 2007) and the first performance of Bach's St. John Passion in Iran (in 2008).

The festival has cooperated with Cairo Opera House, Damascus Opera House, Izmir State Opera, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Holland Festival, Elbphilharmonie, Stiftung Schloss Neuhardenberg, Daniel Barenboim & the West Eastern Divan Orchestra, Lahore World Music Festival, Flamenco Biennale Nederland, Pergamonmuseum Berlin, Bimhuis Amsterdam, American University of Beirut and the Oriental Landscapes Festival Damascus among others.

The festival has premiered commissioned works by notable composers such as Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, Nader Mashayekhi, Saed Haddad, Kinan Azmeh, Zaid Jabri, Issam Rafea, Dima Orsho, Nouri Iskander and more.

Numerous documentary films and CDs have been produced, both about the festival itself and events associated with it, several of them receiving record prizes.

In 2009, the festival established the Morgenland Chamber Orchestra, which has worked with artists such as Alim Qasimov, Djivan Gasparyan, Dima Orsho, Maias Alyamani, Kinan Azmeh and many others. In 2012, the Morgenland Morgenland All Star Band was formed – with its exhilarating and global mesh of traditional, jazz and rock music, the All Star Band has fascinated audiences at the Bimhuis in Amsterdam, the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, the Philharmonic Hall in Almaty, the Saygun Culture Center in Izmir and in venues throughout China.

Michael Dreyer is the founder and artistic director of the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück. Born in Göttingen, he studied classical guitar at the Musikhochschule Detmold/Münster. In 2005 he founded the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück, and in 2013 he initiated the International Music Summer in Iraqi Kurdistan. He programmed the “Salam Syria” festival for the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie. Together with the Argentinean guitarist Hugo Gaido, he founded the label Dreyer Gaido Musikproduktionen, with which he has produced over 160 CDs and films to date. As an author and co-producer, Michael Dreyer worked in particular with the Dutch filmmaker Frank Scheffer on film productions about music in Iran. Michael Dreyer was awarded the “International Music Peace Prize” of the Praetorius Music Prize for his work. He has been the manager of the NDR Bigband since July 2022.

The Syrian clarinetist and composer Kinan Azmeh curates the 2025 program.
Azmeh, born and raised in Damascus, studied in Damascus and at the renowned Juilliard School in New York. He has been associated with the Morgenland Festival Osnabrück since 2011. Azmeh is a founding member of the Morgenland All Star Band. He composed the Arabic-language music theater “Music for Days to Come”, has performed with his trio Hewar as well as with the NDR Bigband, Giora Feidman and the Osnabrück Youth Choir.

Azmeh has received commissions from the New York Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, the Knights Orchestra, the Elbphilharmonie, the Apple Hill String Quartet, the Brooklyn Rider Quartet and Robert Wilson.
He has performed at some of the world's most prestigious concert halls, including the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, Carnegie Hall and the UN General Assembly in New York. He has shared the stage with musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma (with whose Silk Road Ensemble he won a Grammy Award), Daniel Barenboim, John McLaughlin, Jivan Gasparyan and many others.