The Swiss clarinettist Reto Bieri is one of the most fascinating musical personalities of our time. As a soloist, chamber musician, curator and, more recently, as a conductor too, he engages with works from all manner of epochs and in very different styles, often in unconventional concert programmes. He’s a poet in sound and a maverick who happily crosses boundaries on his hunt for extraordinary sensibilities and perceptions. The *Luzerner Zeitung* described Bieri’s recent concert project “Out of the box” at the Lucerne Festival as “the craziest event in the whole Festival”.

Bieri was born in Canton Zug and grew up with traditional folk music. He initially trained as a primary school teacher before studying at the music academies of Basel and Zurich, then later at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. He has been influenced by a wide variety of personalities, from the composers György Kurtág, George Crumb and Heinz Holliger to the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the violinist Eberhard Feltz, the priest Werner Hegglin, Dimitri the clown and the writer Gerhard Meier. Bieri plays regularly with renowned orchestras in major concert halls – most recently at the Auditorio Nacional de Música in Madrid, the Wigmore Hall London, the London Southbank Centre, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, the Philharmonie Essen, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the KKL Lucerne, the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume in Aix-en-Provence, the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest, the Franz Liszt Music Academy in Budapest, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Basel Theatre. Bieri’s CD recordings – including his highly acclaimed album *quasi morendo* with the Meta4 String Quartet from Finland – are available on the cult label ECM of Munich. In 2023, Bieri was awarded the Cultural Prize of the Canton of Zug. From 2013 to 2018 he was the Artistic Director of the “DAVOS FESTIVAL – young artists in concert” in Switzerland. From 2012 to 2022 he was a professor of chamber music at the Music Academy of Würzburg in Germany, and in 2022 he was appointed a professor of chamber music at the University of Music and Theatre in Munich, where he still works today