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One for all by Mathias Kunzli

From the album

Album Title: Boundless Reasons To Admire The Moon
Label: Adhyâropa Records
Released: 2026
Duration: 00:47:00

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About the Album

“Mathias Kunzli is a wonderfully creative and intuitive musician. He always knows what’s needed to support our storytelling.” – Ken Burns, filmmaker

"Mathias Kunzli is an incredible musician who creates with great sensitivity and depth. He is so skilled, while also able to just let go and meditate on a moment. His textures and compositions are always varied, and with this new record he adds to his long-standing tradition of playfulness and experimentation.” – Regina Spektor

“I have known and played with Mathias for over 20 years. His pocket is wide, his groove is deep. Mathias' gentle touch, boundless imagination, and most importantly, incredibly attentive ears make him a stellar collaborator, and one of my all time favorite musicians to work with.” – Johnny Gandelsman (MacArthur fellow and Grammy-winning violinist and producer)

Adhyâropa Records is thrilled to announce Boundless Reasons To Admire The Moon (ÂR00195), the new solo percussion album by Mathias Kunzli, one of the world’s most respected and in-demand drummer/percussionists and certainly among its most wide-ranging musical adventurers. On this 17-track, freely improvised virtuoso showcase, Kunzli lays down a cascading monologue of color and texture, as well as a signpost heralding the achievements of an already-legendary career still in full flight.

To music industry insiders Kunzli needs no introduction, but the broader musical world is rapidly learning his name. A glance at the breadth of his collaborators tells the story of his extraordinary versatility; he has been Regina Spektor’s touring drummer since 2012, and has performed and recorded with artists such as Lauryn Hill, Moby, Yo-Yo Ma, Ken Burns, Kinan Azmeh, Kimbra, Rhiannon Giddens, Vieux Farka Toure, John Zorn, Marc Ribot, The Paul Winter Consort, Keyhan Kalhor, Brooklyn Rider, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Frank London, Ljova and the Kontraband, Time For Three, and Magos Herrera, just to name a few. He has appeared on dozens of film and TV soundtracks and on nearly every major stage across the world, and is endorsed by Sabian Cymbals, Remo, Meinl, Cooperman Frame Drums, and Agner Drum Sticks.

“Regardless of the context, my instincts and quick ears have always been my most trusted asset and have led me to countless musical endeavors. Through the exposure to countless collaborators from across the globe, I have been able to learn and shape my own voice. It's about finding the balance between the known and your own contributions. I mostly find a way to integrate myself and proceed with full commitment into any situation that presents itself. Leaping into the unknown, with spontaneous and intuitive music-making, something inside me knows that I can communicate with anyone, anywhere, on a purely musical level, and it might not come out in the traditional way, but most of the musicians that welcome me to their own projects are the ones who weren’t looking for that to begin with.”

Kunzli has the manic energy and unstoppable momentum of a Safdie Brothers movie; he speaks and moves in an unbroken stream of consciousness, his cascading grey locks bobbing around his head like a bottle cap struggling to contain a shaken-up soda. “I grew up playing sports but was frequently injured, and drumming became a way for me to move my body without breaking it quite as much,” Kunzli laughs. “Sitting down to play drums allows me to direct my focus in a way sports couldn’t offer. I feel like I can put my hands on the instruments and just let it flow from me at any time. It’s a magic I don’t always understand and barely feel in control of when it’s happening.”

His third solo album, Boundless Reasons To Admire The Moon is a document of that endlessly inventive flow. Working from behind a mixed drum and percussion battery with a frame drum as its centerpiece and musical heart, Kunzli creates a circumfluent, immersive experience that delights, surprises, and even shocks. It whisks the listener along with the insuperable flood of his creativity and leaves them changed and focused; it seems almost intentionally designed to produce an Oliveirosian deep-listening experience. “I’ve had that frame drum for 30 years, going back to my Berklee days, studying with Jamey Haddad,” Kunzli says. “I’ve never even changed the skin on it – I think my entire development as a musician, from student to professional, is written on that drum.”

Some tracks are ruminative, ambient, like the album closer ‘Twenty-nine and a half,’ a more than 7 minute journey through the entire landscape of sounds at Kunzli’s disposal. Others, like the 48-second ‘Moon Quakes,’ are a focused drag race of muscular, percussive energy. But on each, and throughout the recording, the kaleidoscope of Kunzli’s musical experience and passions is evident, on every note, and in every phrase. “It’s hard to really talk in any specifics about this record – it literally happened in two hours. One afternoon I sat down and played, just for myself, and then the next afternoon a little bit more, and there it was, a snapshot, a cross-section of who I am at this very moment in time, but also a photo album of where I’ve been, who I’ve collaborated with, and what sparks my creative excitement.”

The Swiss-born Kunzli came to the United States at 19 to study at Berklee, and his adopted country has provided an ample sandbox for his imagination and talents. “While I was at Berklee I realized pretty early on that it was a scenario that most people can’t replicate in the real world, an almost overwhelming amount of different music. Brazilian, Balkan – one day I’m playing with the Greeks, the next day with the Israelis, then the Irish, the Africans, the French, whoever the f*** would say yes to me! It felt like then – and still! – like every time I play music I’m a bit of a tourist. Even when I’m playing jazz, I’m a Swiss guy playing jazz; and when I’m in a Western classical music context, which is supposedly my music, I’m still an outsider looking in, one foot in the door and another in the neighbor’s yard. I still play every day in so many different kinds of music, and when I do, it’s because someone has welcomed me into their world and asked me to simply be myself within it, to play the way that only I can and add that tapestry of influences and experiences to their own.”

Boundless is just that: unbound, unfettered, and completely organic. In an age of AI, artificiality, and algorithms, Kunzli is perhaps so interesting to the artists who keep him on speed dial because he is none of those things. “We want rawness in the world these days. There’s a community of artists who crave it, and there’s certainly an audience of listeners who need it. There’s a palpable culture-wide desire for a viscerally human experience. When I play with an artist for the first time, I find that my first attempts, not even really knowing the music very well, are usually more interesting than what I’m able to do even after fully digested the music, because my instincts and ear know something that my left-brain never can, and can speak to the craving for realness that a lot of us are feeling right now.”

“I am genuinely grateful that there are people in the world willing to open their arms to me! To invite me into their musical world and to ask me to bring something unique to any musical situation that all on its own can differentiate or even elevate what might have been routine is a privilege," Kunzli says. “The musicians I work with the most are the ones interested in expanding their voice or their tradition to something fresh and potentially a bit more risky. While admiring all types of approaches to music, I have always been mostly attracted to the innovative minds. I’m so f***ing lucky to have found myself amongst that type of musical community, and as much as they are a gift to me, I think I’m able to offer them something valuable in return.”

Tracks

Cycles; Illuminator; Twenty-three and a half; Driving the tides; Some must howl; Reunion; Mass spawning; Axial tilt; Spring and neap; Navigator; One for all; Time keeper; Moonquakes; Nutrients and oxygen; Tidal bore; Stabilizer; Twenty- nine and a half

Personnel

Mathias Kunzli

percussion

Additional Personnel

Spotlight Floodlight: modular synth

Date featured

August 27, 2026

This song appears by permission of the contributing artist and/or record company. It is for personal use only; no other rights are granted or implied.