Biography
Roberto Kunstler, born in Rome, began playing and composing songs in the late 1970s. While still a high school student, he performed for the first time at Folk Studio, where he connected with the singer-songwriters of the Roman School. In 1984, his first 7-inch single, "Danzando con la notte e col vento" (Saint Vincent 1984), was released by Vincenzo Micocci's it/Rca label. That same year, the B-side, "Piccola regina del varietà," won the Rino Gaetano Award.
In 1985, he participated in the Sanremo Music Festival in the Newcomers section with the song "Saranno i giovani," delivering a message of peace and freedom. In February of the same year, he released his debut album, Gente comune (1985). He continued to perform live throughout Italy and also joined the "Sanremo a Mosca" tour. In 1989, his second album, Mamma, Pilato non mi vuole più (it/Virgin/Universal Publishing), was released, once again with it/Rca. In 1991, he followed up with Eclettico Ecclesiastico (it/Virgin/Universal Publishing). Alongside radio and TV appearances, including two music videos on Video Music, he continued to tour the country and joined Red Ronnie's "Be-bop-a-lula sotto la tenda" tour as a permanent guest, performing in Italy's major regional capitals. In 1992, he met Sergio Cammariere, starting an artistic collaboration that led to the joint release of the album I ricordi e le persone (BMG/Universal Publishing) in 1993. Among many tracks, the album featured the very first version of "Dalla pace del mare lontano." During the same period, they co-wrote "Mentre piove" for Paola Turci and "Amore e guerra" for Francesca Schiavo (Sanremo Music Festival 1995). In 1997, he participated in the Premio Tenco as Cammariere's songwriter, contributing five songs for which he wrote both the lyrics and music. Around this time, he also collaborated with Alex Britti ("Esci piano," featured on the soundtrack of the film Stressati and released as Britti's debut single).
In 2001, he contributed to the soundtrack of Giuseppe Bertolucci's film L'amore probabilmente (Venice Film Festival). That same year, he participated in the Premio Tenco both as a singer-songwriter and as a songwriter for Cammariere. In 2002, he returned to the Premio Tenco as a songwriter for Cammariere, writing all the lyrics and part of the music for Dalla pace del mare lontano (Sergio Cammariere's debut album).
In 2003, he participated as a songwriter in the Sanremo Music Festival with the song "Tutto quello che un uomo" (written by Kunstler-Cammariere), securing third place and winning the Critics' Award. In 2004, he wrote all the lyrics for Cammariere's second album, Sul Sentiero. Together, they also wrote the song "L'Azzurro Immenso" for Ornella Vanoni. In 2005, after several years, he released a new album of his own, titled Kunstler. In 2006, he appeared as a guest at the Musicultura festival, performing two tracks from his new record.
In 2007, his music video "Io contro io" (Universal Publishing) was selected by National Geographic Channel as one of the ten best Italian music videos of the year. He wrote all the lyrics for Sergio Cammariere's third album, Il pane, il vino e la visione. In 2008, he wrote the lyrics for Cammariere's "L'amore non si spiega" (Sanremo 2008) and "Le note blu," both featured in the compilation album Cantautore Piccolino (a title track also written by Kunstler). In 2009, he wrote for other performers both in Italy and abroad; notably, three songs on Alex Britti's new CD (.23) featured lyrics by Roberto Kunstler. He then wrote all the lyrics for Sergio Cammariere's fourth album, Carovane. In 2011, he penned the lyrics for Sergio Cammariere's fifth work (self-titled Cammariere). Meanwhile, he traveled to France, performing his songs in both Italian and French translation—first in small clubs, then at the historic "Palace" theater in Paris, and at the Cité Internationale des Arts, earning widespread praise from both the public and critics (see the article link in "L'Express"). https://www.lexpress.fr/culture/musique/roberto-kunstler-quelque-chose-de-bob-dylan_1099758.html
In 2012, he published Primo Treno, a collection of "poems and songs" featuring an introduction by Maurizio Cucchi (LietoColle publishing house). At the end of 2013, he released his new CD, Mentre, writing the words and music for all the songs. The album included an unreleased duet with Asia Argento, who sang with him on the title track "Mentre." That same year, he wrote the single "Tra due minuti è primavera" for Annalisa Scarrone and resumed performing live. He also wrote lyrics for the Aram Quartet and Filippo Perbellini, while simultaneously working on two more albums for Cammariere: Mano nella mano (2014) and Io (November 2016). Currently, he continues to perform live in an acoustic format, playing both in venues frequented by the new generation of bands and songwriters in the capital, as well as across the country and at various music festivals. Between 2016 and 2018, he released a series of singles, leading up to the 2019 release of a new album, Senza dire Niente (digitally distributed by Artist First). The record features unreleased songs alongside his own versions of tracks previously performed by Cammariere, such as "Tutto quello che un uomo," "Vita d'artista," and "Dalla pace del mare lontano." Also in 2019, he published an anthology containing the lyrics to fifty selected songs alongside other poems in the book Cantiere (Di Felice Edizioni), and wrote all the lyrics for Cammariere's new album, La fine di tutti i guai. The year 2020 marked the beginning of a unique adventure as an illustrator, resulting in an exhibition and a short but intense pamphlet on art written by (and with) Jonathan Giustini: Vita d'Artista - Un ragionare al margine dei disegni di Roberto Kunstler (Arsenio Edizioni). In 2021, he released the EP Davanti alla fine del mondo, digitally distributed by Sony Music Entertainment (May 2021).
In 2023, Sergio Cammariere's new album UNA SOLA GIORNATA was released, featuring thirteen tracks, all with lyrics by Roberto. In the spring of that same year, Mina included the song "TUTTO QUELLO CHE UN UOMO" (by R. Kunstler – S. Cammariere) on her new album.
In September 2024, he began recording a new album. In this new work, Kunstler pays tribute to some of the most famous American singer-songwriters of the 1960s and 70s, translating several of their songs into Italian. The collection represents a musical journey in search of Roberto Kunstler's most authentic roots—a sort of fresh start and a return to his origins, but with a gaze firmly fixed on the future. Or rather, the present! The album was deeply conceptualized and recorded featuring just guitar and vocals. It includes a dozen translations and adaptations that Kunstler has approached over several years with particular interest and an innovative perspective.
In November 2025, TUTTO QUI (More to this) was released via Warner Music digital distribution as the first single from the upcoming eponymous album. That same month saw the release of LA PIOGGIA CHE NON CADE MAI, the new album by Sergio Cammariere, featuring 13 new tracks for which Kunstler, as always, wrote all the lyrics.
In April of the same year, IL FANTASMA DI TOM JOAD (The Ghost of Tom Joad) was released as the second single from this new acoustic project of translations and adaptations.
Introducing Roberto Kunstler
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A rare case within the landscape of Italian songwriting is that of Roberto Kunstler, who for over thirty years has managed to simultaneously run two creative workshops—two construction sites, as it were. Toward the end of the 1970s, he began writing his own songs, and from 1992 to the present, he has also penned the entire Kunstler-Cammariere repertoire. These are two complementary and prolific paths that he pursues without ever betraying his own artistic identity.
In fact, it is a sort of creative "dualism" that allows him to write both solo, as a singer-songwriter, and as part of a duo—mirroring the very bands that inspired him as a boy and made music history from the 1960s to today. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, to name the most striking examples, where the birth of a song is almost always the fruit of a partnership between two musicians, often singers themselves. It is precisely this aspect that drew Kunstler to immerse himself in this new and different creative context, where he nevertheless continues to bring his unique language while constantly discovering new approaches to writing. At times, this involves revisiting past or unreleased songs; at others, it means crafting lyrics over harmonies and melodies created by his friend Cammariere, placing immense importance not only on the core concept but—since these are words set to music—also on the very sound of the word itself. During the writing phase, Kunstler and Cammariere rehearse, play, and sing the track together until the structure of every single song is fully defined.
The roots of Kunstler the singer-songwriter can be traced back to his high school days toward the end of the 1970s. While still a student, he performed his first shows at Folk Studio and skipped school to spend entire mornings in a small bookshop in the center of Rome, feeding on the giants of French literature like Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Bataille. He himself describes having received a true "initiation" during those years.
At university, he continued to display a vivid curiosity toward the worlds of poetry, philosophy, the history of religions, and anthropology. He studied and wrote an immense number of songs, experimenting with an intense form of writing that springs from silence, mindfulness, concentration, and listening to everything that the noise of modernity has drowned out. His writing is akin to turning oneself into an antenna—a transceiver of signals released into the universe since the days of Socrates and Plato. And even earlier! His gaze is not so much "intellectualistic" as it is intimately close to the most imperceptible movements of the heart (an "encyclopedia of universal knowledge"). This makes Kunstler's writing profoundly "untimely"—that is to say, rooted in fertile ground, a still-virgin frontier territory, the only place where artistic creation can still become a cosmogony. To delve into Kunstler's lyrics means grasping those archetypal substances that move reality. Mysterious as they may be in the face of life's immensity and the complexity of all cognition, they transform and reveal their true essence to a gaze that is intuitive and searching, rather than merely visionary.
Even when giving life to surreal modern mythologies, his language utilizes the most humble and familiar objects, revealing a subtle bond with the more Whitmanesque authors of the Beat Generation. Kunstler's journey is a metaphysical one, tracing the fluid borders of an emotional and meditative landscape that feeds the existential inquiry underpinning his entire body of work.
A matter of memory
It is all a matter of memory. Over the years, I have come to realize that while I am writing more and more, it feels as though I am writing less and less. It is memory that condenses the essential and definitive traits of every text. When a text is true and complete, I know it by heart. And I do not know how it works. And that is what fascinates me.
But before, a long time ago, I always carried small, red-bordered black notebooks in my pockets. I wrote poems and songs with pencils and about pencils—true little bows drawn in the direction of literary symphonies that, in my case, often end up inspiring music.
I have experienced a way of writing that springs from silence, from mindfulness, from concentration, and from listening to everything that the noise of modernity has submerged. I consider my writing as turning oneself into an antenna, a transceiver of signals released into the universe since the days of Socrates and Plato.
And even earlier, from the ancient Eastern and Middle Eastern civilizations. Tracing all the way back to the age of myth. And this is why I have always wanted my writing, even when dealing with everyday themes, never to be anchored to a specific time, but to be somehow untimely and outside of profane time—dwelling instead in a foundational time, just like that of mythology. In the same way, all the characters and landscapes in many of my songs are immersed in a private odyssey, a private legend, a time that is out of time.
Today, beyond the battles won and lost, beyond the satisfactions, the hunger or the profits, the critics' awards and festivals and television, the visibility and the lack of visibility, I have always written thanks to that initiation I had the chance to receive toward the second half of the seventies, when... the road was long and seemed endless.
These songs and these verses have been necessary, in the Greek sense of the word. Taken individually or as a single block of thought captured at its source, they are steeped in the testimony of a collective, social, and historical memory—imbued with the way of feeling and perceiving of someone who was eighteen in '78, during the Years of Lead, at the end of that dream, of that hope for change... at the end of an era that had begun more than fifteen years earlier and, for some, had reached its peak in the famous '68, when I was in the third grade.
But then came '77. And the last embers of that revolution, which had been born peaceful, unfortunately turned into further violence.
Personally, I have never participated in any political activity. By the age of sixteen, Bob Dylan, the reading of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, of Montale and Ungaretti, poetry and music had already occupied a major part of my future.
I remember well that around the age of fourteen I had this idea about songs, and I saw songs as something important—at least as important as writing for a major daily newspaper, but even more so! Because they could truly reach everyone!
Within what I considered the complex cultural fabric of the country, I saw songwriting as a profession of communication, of social and spiritual intervention and contribution—something that had to be transmitted, a common effort to be made in order to progress on the path of a balanced evolution governed by the understanding of the heart.
I began this craft and this career very young; I recorded for the first time in the RCA studios when I was still in high school, and my mother had to write me a note so that, from time to time, I could skip two or three days of school!
Roberto Kunstler