Marcos Machado enjoys an international career as a concert artist, teacher and chamber musician. Machado is a faculty member at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in Hattiesburg, USA. At USM, Machado teaches classical double bass, chamber music and jazz studies and is the director of the Southern Miss Bass Symposium. He is also the principal bass of the Meridian Symphony and is a member of the USM Jazz Faculty Ensemble. In Brazil, he is the Founder and Pedagogic Director of FIMP (Festival Internacional Música no Pampa) in Bagé, located on the border of Brazil and Uruguay.
A native of Brazil, Marcos has earned the coveted "Teaching and Performance" diplomas from the Rabbath International Institute where he studied with renowned bassist François Rabbath. Marcos started double bass studies with Uruguayan professor Milton Romay Masciadri (1931-2009), former principal bass of the Porto Alegre Symphony Orchestra. He later moved to the USA and studied at the University of Georgia with Dr. Milton Walter Masciadri. Marcos holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) degree in Music Performance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with Professor Michael Cameron. Marcos has been principal bass of the Sinfonia da Camera Chamber Orchestra in Illinois and with Russian chamber orchestra ARCO. He has many CDs recorded with these orchestras. Marcos is also very active performing on the electric bass on which he recorded a CD with Rudolf Haken's compositions and played music by English composer Steve Martland with electric bass.
Marcos maintains an active performing schedule having performed with renowned musicians such as Viktor Uzur, Cármelo de los Santos, Giuseppe Lupis, Ney Fialkow, Alejandro Drago, Guigla Katsarava, Antonio del Claro, Evgeny Rivkin, Levon Ambartsumian, Dimitri Berlinsky, Michael Cameron, Sherban Lupu, Ian Hobson, Lewis Nielson, Larry Panella, Craig Hella Johnson, etc and toured in Italy, France, Switzerland, Germany and England as principal bass and soloist. He has also participated in the Montreux Jazz Festival, Vienne Jazz Festival, Victoria Bach Festival, Bonneville Chamber Music Festival, Premier Music Festival , FestivalSouth, Northern Lights Music Festival, Spoleto Festival, Festival Música nas Montanhas, Oficina de Música de Curitiba, Festival Internacional de Música Unisinos, Festival Internacional SESC de Música, FIMP-Festival Internacional Musica no Pampa, etc.
Important solo performances with orchestras include the South American première of Frank Proto's Carmen Fantasy, and Nine Variants on Paganini. In the U.S., Marcos performed Proto's Four Scenes after Picasso with the Meridian Symphony, Charles Young's Concerto for Double Bass with the USM's Wind Ensemble and the Bottesini Grand Duo, with violinist Cármelo de los Santos, with the New Mexico University Symphony Orchestra, Versatilis Chamber Orchestra and Master Camerata.
Currently he is artist-in-residence and faculty member at Premier Orchestral Institute in Jackson, Northern Lights Music Festival in Aurora, MN, Festival Música nas Montanhas in Poços de Caldas (Brazil), FIMP-Festival Internacional Música no Pampa, Bagé (Brazil), and Festival Internacional SESC de Música, Pelotas (Brazil).
With the Austin-based Conspirare Ensemble, Marcos has toured and recorded a CD Threshold of Night nominated for two 2009 Grammy Awards, and was part of the PBS Special "A Company of Voices: Conspirare in Concert" that was broadcast nationally in March 2009 and it was nominated to the Grammy Awards Best Classical Crossover Album.
Marcos is the classical and jazz double bass professor at the
University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, USA www.usm.edu/music Click here to visit the double bass studio at Southern Miss;
Scholarships and assistantships available for double bass students. (bachelor, master + doctorate) Contact Marcos for details or visit the bass studio (click on how to apply) and symphony orchestra website.
Upcoming performances: Premier Orchestral Institute, June 2011; International Society of Bassists, San Francisco, Ca, June 2011, FestivalSouth, June 2011, Northern Lights Festival, July 2011; Festival Internacional Música no Pampa July 2011.
download bio (PDF, WORD)