Special Geometries Emerging from Yang-Mills Type Matrix Models

I review some recent results which demonstrate how various geometries, such as Schwarzschild and Reissner-Nordstroem, can emerge from Yang-Mills type matrix models with branes. Furthermore, explicit embeddings of these branes as well as appropriate Poisson structures and star-products which determine the non-commutativity of space-time are provided. These structures are motivated by higher order terms in the effective matrix model action which semi-classically lead to an Einstein-Hilbert type action.