Matthias Frey, born in Wiesbaden in 1956, taught himself to play the piano and performed with his own bands from the age of 14. At the age of 20 he released his first LP with only his own compositions, three years later he won the soloist prize at the jazz festival in San Sebastian and then played at the most important jazz festivals in Germany. But Frey looked outside the box of jazz, which was still relatively erratic at the time. In 1983 he traveled for the Goethe-Institut to East Africa and the Middle East for the first time, and countless trips around the world that enriched his musical cosmos have followed to this day. He realized a “Jazz and Poetry” project with the Nigerian author Wole Soyinka, wrote chamber music and has composed numerous film scores since 1982, which have been nominated for the German TV Prize and even for the Emmy. He has been organizing a “World Sound Festival” since 2012 and a film music festival since 2013. Most recently, Frey co-founded the band Cairo Steps with the Egyptian oud player Basem Darwisch, which is currently causing a sensation by working with Germany’s most successful world music band Quadro Nuevo. In all of his projects, including over 30 CD productions to date, Frey’s passion for sharing with other diverse music cultures is present, in which new or minimal music can meet jazz, folk, Indian ragas, African rhythms or oriental scales.