Matthias Ziegler (b. Bern, Switzerland, February 13, 1955) is a Swiss flautist and professor of flute who specializes in contemporary music for various sizes of flute (including flute,

alto flute The alto flute is an instrument in the Western concert flute family, the second-highest member below the standard C flute after the uncommon flûte d'amour. It is the third most common member of its family after the standard C flute and the ...

bass flute The bass flute is a member of the flute family. It is in the key of C, pitched one octave below the concert flute. Despite its name, its playing range makes it the tenor member of the flute family. Because of the length of its tube (approxima ...

, and contrabass flute).

Early life and career

Ziegler started playing with recorder at the age of four and by the age of nine decided to practice playing a flute. Two years prior to it, his grandparents took him to a flute and organ concert, with the fascination with the flute arose from there. Ziegler plays Miguel Arista's Louis Lot, especially during collaboration with Bickford Brannen and Eva Kingma, who plays Alto flute. His choice of this instrument came after long studying at Zurich Conservatory and eventually making his mind on Jack Moore's flute. In Conservatory he studied under various teachers and music pedagogues, including;

William Bennett William John Bennett (born July 31, 1943) is an American conservative politician and political commentator who served as secretary of education from 1985 to 1988 under President Ronald Reagan. He also held the post of director of the Office o ...

Geoffrey Gilbert Geoffrey Winzer Gilbert (28 May 1914 – 1989) was an English flautist, who was a leading influence on British flute-playing, introducing a more flexible style, based on French techniques, with metal instruments replacing the traditional wood. H ...

, André Jaunet, and

Conrad Klemm Conrad may refer to: People * Conrad (name) Places United States * Conrad, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Conrad, Indiana, an unincorporated community * Conrad, Iowa, a city * Conrad, Montana, a city * Conrad Glacier, Washington ...

. Ziegler has toured with

Andreas Vollenweider Andreas Vollenweider (born 4 October 1953) is a Swiss harpist. He is generally categorised as a new-age musician and uses a modified electroacoustic harp of his own design. He has worked with Bobby McFerrin, Carly Simon, Luciano Pavarotti and i ...

and George Gruntz, and performed with Pierre Favre and Mark Dresser. In a classical context, he was formerly the solo flautist for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra.

Playing style

Ziegler's original works for flute instruments feature numerous extended techniques. In order to allow for the production of a buzzing

timbre In music, timbre ( ), also known as tone color or tone quality (from psychoacoustics), is the perceived sound quality of a musical note, sound or tone. Timbre distinguishes different types of sound production, such as choir voices and music ...

, he has installed small PET film membranes similar to the '' dimo'' used on the Chinese '' dizi'' on several of his instruments; he calls flutes so equipped "matusiflute." In addition, he plays

quarter tone A quarter tone is a pitch halfway between the usual notes of a chromatic scale or an interval about half as wide (aurally, or logarithmically) as a semitone, which itself is half a whole tone. Quarter tones divide the octave by 50 cents each, ...

flutes. Ziegler is also proficient with jazz and improvised music, and frequently performs in an electroacoustic setting. He amplifies his flutes with microphones installed directly into the instruments, and utilizes electronic

loop Loop or LOOP may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live * Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets * Loop Mobile, ...

devices (LOOP delay, Echoplex, Echoloop) to allow him to layer sounds. About his work, he states: "All sounds (key noise, winds, tongue stops) usually neglected on the flute are amplified. There is a whole orchestra inside the flute, which allows me to play solo-polyphonic music." Noting a similarity in tone between his large flutes and the

viola da gamba The viol (), viola da gamba (), or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted, and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch ...

, he also performs

Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the T ...

originally composed for viola da gamba. He lives in

Stäfa Stäfa is a municipality in the district of Meilen in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland. Geography Stäfa has an area of . Of this area, 46.1% is used for agricultural purposes, while 18.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 34% is set ...

Canton of Zurich Canton may refer to: Administrative division terminology * Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland * Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French Arts and ent ...

, Switzerland, and has toured the United States, Japan, Australia, South America, and Israel.

Discography

*1999 - ''Uakti: New Music for Flute''. New Albion Records.

References

External links

Matthias Ziegler official siteMatthias Ziegler page
from Elision Fields site
Matthias Ziegler
1955 births Swiss classical flautists Living people People from Stäfa {{flautist-stub