Trio Accanto
Consisting of Marcus Weiss (saxophone), Stefan Wirth (piano) and Christian Dierstein (percussion), Trio Accanto is a group of three internationally prominent soloists bound together by a unique approach to chamber music. The ensemble has been praised for its "mastery" and "world-class interpretations."
The trio was originally founded in 1994 by Yukiko Sugawara, Marcus Weiss, and Christian Dierstein. From 2013 to 2025, the pianist of the ensemble was Nicolas Hodges. Since 2025, Stefan Wirth has joined the group as pianist.
The scoring of saxophone, piano, and percussion is common in jazz but was a rarity in classical music—leading to the description "a jazz trio that does not play jazz"—until Trio Accanto turned this situation around, stimulating close to one hundred composers to write new works over the years. Major figures such as Mark Andre, Georges Aperghis, Aldo Clementi, Michael Finnissy, Vinko Globokar, Georg Friedrich Haas, Toshio Hosokawa, Helmut Lachenmann, Brice Pauset, Rolf Riehm, Wolfgang Rihm, Rebecca Saunders, Salvatore Sciarrino, Martin Smolka, Christian Wolff, and Walter Zimmermann have contributed to the trio's repertoire, along with a substantial list of younger composers from around the world. A rigorous and increasingly broad-ranging programme of commissions continues, including works by Lisa Illean, Misato Mochizuki, Eivind Buene, Beat Furrer, Evan Johnson, and Mikel Urquiza.
Trio Accanto has performed at festivals in Donaueschingen, Witten, Darmstadt, Hanover, Cologne, Munich, Freiburg, Huddersfield, Basel, and Saarbrücken, as well as at Eclat (Stuttgart), Munich Biennale, Maerzmusik (Berlin), Salzburg Festival, Wien Modern, Tage für Neue Musik (Zurich), and further afield in Madrid, Seville, Chicago, Viitasaari (Finland), and at the Takefu Festival (Japan).
The trio's CD recordings have appeared on Kairos, HatHut, Edition Zeitklang, Assai, Verso, and Wergo. Recent releases on Wergo include Funambules, featuring music by Aperghis, Riehm, Schöllhorn, and Prins; Songs and Poems, featuring music by Clementi, Dohmen, Rihm, Thomalla, and Zimmermann; and other stories, featuring music by Finnissy, Kuwabara, Lachenmann, Schüttler, and Smolka. The most recent is a disc of music by Christian Wolff, featuring the half-hour Trio IX – Accanto, along with a group of recent Exercises, some also written especially for Trio Accanto. Future releases include Evan Johnson’s Plan and section of the same reservoir on the label Another Timbre, recorded after a series of performances in Autumn 2021.
Marcus Weiss
Marcus Weiss studied with Iwan Roth in Basel and with Fred Hemke in Chicago. He has played a crucial role in developing the repertoire for the saxophone, through his numerous premieres of a wide range of new works, as well as his teaching and through his book The Techniques of Saxophone Playing (Bärenreiter 2010). Aside from his work with Trio Accanto, his premieres have included works by Aperghis, Baltakas, Cage, Clementi, Furrer, Gervasoni, Globokar, Hidalgo, Hosokawa, Jarrell, Kyburz, Kôndô, Lachenmann, Lang, Netti, Pauset, Rihm, Sciarrino, Sharp, Sotelo, Stockhausen, and Zimmermann. He has premiered concerti by Peter Eötvös, Georg Friedrich Haas, Hanspeter Kyburz, Johannes Maria Staud and others. Marcus Weiss is highly active as a chamber musician, besides Accanto, also with XASAX and other formations.
Since 1995, Marcus Weiss has been professor for saxophone and chamber music at Basel's Hochschule für Musik, and since 2006 responsible for the saxophone classes at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse für neue Musik, and at IMPULS Graz.
Christian Dierstein
Christian Dierstein has established himself among the most interesting performers in the contempory music of our time. He studied under Bernhard Wulff at the Freiburg Musikhochschule and under Gaston Sylvestre in Paris. He is the winner of numerous competitions and received scholarships from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the Akademie Schloß Solitude, Stuttgart. He has been the percussionist of ensemble recherche since 1988. In addition to his performances of new music, he has focused on non-European music and free improvisation. He has given solo concerts throughout Europe in the Rising Stars series. Important appearances include: Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Athens, Berliner Festspiele, Brussels Festival, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Huddersfield Festival, Lucerne Festival, Monday Evening Concerts Los Angeles, Rachmaninov Hall Moskau, Festival d`Autome Paris, Ircam Paris, Rome, Salzburg Festival, Schleswig Holstien Festival, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Wien Modern, Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Zürich Festival für neue Musik. He has recorded for several labels, including Kairos, col legno, Stradivarius, Winter & Winter, neos and his recordings have been the recipients of numerous awards. Christian Dierstein works together regulary with several of the greatest living composers, figures such as Hans Abrahamsen, Beat Furrer, Hugues Dufourt, Helmut Lachenmann, Rebecca Saunders, Salvatore Sciarrino. Since 2001 he has been professor for percussion and new chamber music at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel, Switzerland. He has given masterclasses in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Genf, Madrid, Moskau, New York, Oslo, Peking, Valencia, Tiflis and others.
Stefan Wirth
Stefan Wirth is a Swiss pianist and composer.
As a pianist, he focuses primarily on contemporary music and has collaborated as a member of Ensemble CNZ (Zurich, Switzerland) and Ensemble Contrechamps (Geneva, Switzerland) with composers such as Heinz Holliger, Pierre Boulez, Beat Furrer, Enno Poppe, and Rebecca Saunders and with conductors such as Jonathan Stockhammer, Michael Wendeberg, Titus Engel, Peter Rundel, Vimbayi Kaziboni and Elena Schwarz.
In 2025 he joined the Trio Accanto with Marcus Weiß and Christian Dierstein.
As a member of the four-piano ensemble Gershwin Piano Quartet, he has performed at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Ruhr Piano Festival, the KKL Lucerne, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Konzerthaus Dortmund, the National Palace of Culture in Sofia (Bulgaria), the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing (China), and the Sala São Paulo (Brazil), among others.
His catalogue of works comprises around 30 pieces for various instrumentations, ranging from solo works to opera. He has received commissions from the Munich Chamber Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Basel Sinfonietta, the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, Collegium Novum Zürich, Ensemble Contrechamps, the NEXUS Reed Quintet, Ensemble of Nomads, Soyuz 21, Ensemble Proton, Klangforum Heidelberg, Ensemble
Makrokosmos, Ensemble ö!, Camerata Variabile, Ensemble Aequatuor, the Bern Chamber Orchestra, Konzert Theater Bern, as well as from WDR for the Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik, Deutschlandfunk, the Poetische Liedertage in Weimar, the Ruhrtriennale, and the Lucerne Festival.
His opera „Girl with a Pearl earring“ was premiered at the Zurich Opera in 2022 and was named „Best Opera Premiere of 2022“ by the magazine „Opernwelt“.
In the theater world, he has frequently collaborated with Anna- Sophie Mahler, Christoph Marthaler, and Frank Castorf, and has appeared at the Venice Biennale (Italy), the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and the Volksbühne Berlin.
Stefan Wirth received his musical training at the Zurich University of the Arts (Switzerland), the New England Conservatory (Boston, USA), Indiana University Bloomington, the Tanglewood Music Center (Lenox, MA, USA), and the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh, England. His composition teachers included George Benjamin, Oliver Knussen, Colin Matthews, Michael Gandolfi, and Lee Hyla; as a pianist, he studied with Leonard Hokanson, Stephen Drury, Hadassa Schwimmer, and Irwin Gage.
Since 2019, he has been a professor of classical piano and interpretation in the field of contemporary music at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU), Switzerland.