Michael Schneider is a German flutist, recorder player, and conductor who specializes in historically informed performance practices. As a winner of the ARD Competition in Munich in 1978, Schneider began his career performing with Camerata Köln, and he also founded the period instruments ensemble La Stagione Frankfurt. In 1980, he became a professor at the College of Arts in Berlin, and he has taught at the College of Music and Dramatic Arts in Frankfurt, where he created a course on interpretation of period music. Schneider has given master classes at the Jerusalem Early Music Workshop, the Conservatoire de Paris, and the Summer Academy in Innsbruck. He has appeared with the Northwest German Philharmonic Orchestra, the Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra, the MDR Leipzig Radio Chamber Philharmonic, the Cappella Coloniensis, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, and the Israel Chamber Orchestra. Schneider has made many discoveries of neglected repertoire, including works by Georg Philipp Telemann, Alessandro Scarlatti, George Frederick Handel, Alessandro Stradella, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Franz Ignaz Beck, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Franz Joseph Haydn, Georg Anton Benda, and others. In 2000, Schneider won the Telemann Prize of the city of Magdeburg, in gratitude for his commitment to this composer.