Biography
Matthias Ziegler is one of the most versatile and innovative flautists of his generation. He is equally passionate about the traditional flute repertoire and contemporary music, both composed and improvised.
His concert activities reflect his diversity: recitals with his own specially designed instruments, concerts with percussionist Pierre Favre, collaborations with George Gruntz, tours with American double bassist Mark Dresser, and participation in the Collegium Novum Zürich.
His tours have taken him to the United States, Japan, Australia, South America, and Israel.
Numerous recordings, in both jazz and classical music, attest to the breadth of his musical interests. Matthias Ziegler is a professor of flute and improvisation at the Zurich University of the Arts.
As part of a research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), he is developing new formats for online concerts. In his search for new sounds, he has considerably enriched the expressive potential of the transverse flute and the electroacoustically amplified contrabass flute. Inspired by the unique sonic world of these instruments, composers such as the Swiss Michael Jarrell, George Gruntz, and Mathias Rüegg, the Tajik Benjamin Yusupov, and the American Mark Dresser have written flute concertos specifically for Matthias Ziegler.
Matthias Ziegler plays a Brannen-Kingma quarter-tone transverse flute, an alto and bass flute by Eva Kingma (Netherlands), a contrabass flute by Kotato & Fukushima (Japan), and the Matusi flute, which he designed himself.