Marcus Weiss was born in Basel (Switzerland). He studied saxophone under the tutelage of Iwan Roth at Basel School of Music and Frederick L. Hemke at the Northwestern University (Chicago). He won the Swiss Association of Musician's soloists prize in 1989.
Markus Weiss is one of the most sought-after saxophonists performing contemporary music today. In recent years he has performed many works written especially for him by Georges Aperghis, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, John Cage, Vinko Globokar, Hanspeter Kyburz, Beat Furrer, Michael Jarrell, Mauricio Sotelo, Elliott Sharp, Manuel Hidalgo, Brice Pauset, Stefano Gervasoni, Jô Kôndô and many others, contributing substantially thereby to the development of a new repertoire for his instrument.
Marcus Weiss performs as the soloist in diverse European orchestras and together with such ensembles as "Klangforum Wien", "ensemble contrechamps", "ensemble recherche", "Ensemble Modern", "Chamber Orchestra of Europe" and others.
He performs more recently as a chamber musician in his own two ensembles: the "Trio Accanto" (with Yukiko Sugawara, piano and Christian Dierstein, percussion) and the saxophone ensemble XASAX/Paris. Marcus Weiss plays in various duo formations as an improviser and "composer" together, for example, with Ernesto Molinari or Mark Dresser.
Marcus Weiss has taught saxophone and chamber music at the Basel School of Music since 1995.