Michael Bisping

Michael Bisping was born on July 8th, 1956. Although he was trained to be a lawyer and got his certificate in 1984, he discovered his passion in the music industry at a very early stage. He completed many jobs at local studios, was singing in various bands and performed at small venues. He also worked in an independent "all-rounder" role at a local promoter office KPS for four years.

In 1984 Michael opened his own office in Germany, Bremen: H & B Musikpromotion. After a successful year and a half, Michael merged his own enterprise with Dieter Schubert's tour promotion company: A.S.S. Concert & Promotion GmbH, www.ass-concerts.de .

In the beginning the company employed four people, but after moving to Hamburg in 1986, the number of employees quickly rose to the present level of twenty.

Michael has successfully enlarged the geographical scope of A.S.S., with offices in Hamburg and Berlin. He is constantly working on new and unconventional ideas and is always open to new approaches. Lately a division of A.S.S. was formed, called Dragon Productions, concentrating on Metal Music.

Further to this A.S.S. created new events such as a tour of "the three ???" , a radio play performed live by three speakers. Last year it was the 25th anniversary of the radio play and it got celebrated with a live event in a sold out arena, capacity 11.500.

A.S.S. Concert & Promotion always had their main focus on domestic artists, such as Fury in the Slaughterhouse and Wir sind Helden. In addition to that A.S.S. always has been a home to a lot of different international artists, with a wide range of bands such as Faithless, Moloko, Meat Loaf, Hootie and The Blowfish or various Canadian artists like BTO, Bruce Cockburn and Ron Sexsmith, to name just a few.

Besides Michael's work as one of the main two figures behind A.S.S., he has been a board member of the German Association of the Promotions Industry for 13 years. For the last two years he is serving as the German representative within the IMMF. Another venture of Michael is the company, mad music management, founded in 1995, giving him another role as a manager for various artists.

In 2004 Michael was one of four foundation members of the EC Music Group, www.ecmusicgroup.com.