“Mario Bakuna, a sparkling guitarist, plays with palpable feeling - his virtuosic fluency on the fretboard is controlled and flourishes are perfectly placed. His voice has a texture like heavy cloth”. (Songlines Magazine)
“Mario Bakuna, a man who exudes music. (…) ‘vocals’ doesn’t begin to do him justice: his expressive range and the precision with which he was able to deploy it was truly the band’s fifth instrument. (…) And he did this while playing guitar with precision and finesse. (…) his solos were a further source of amazement, his technique somewhere between finger-picking style and classical. His solo introduction to a Baden Powell number made a hash of any attempt at a definition.” (The Whitman Review, Wakefield Jazz) Mario Bakuna is a London-based Brazilian composer, arranger, singer and guitar player, with twenty years of professional experience. His study focuses on the development of a music repertoire inspired by the greats of Afro-Brazilian Music, Samba, Jazz and Bossa Nova. In addition to developing new arrangements of music by enshrined Brazilian artists as Tom Jobim, Dorival Caymmi, Paulo Moura, and João Donato, in recent years he has been working on reinterpretations of Samba Jazz: a musical genre that emerged in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s and was led by musicians like Luiz Eça, Tamba Trio, and Edson Machado. Their repertoire was based on Brazilian Standards with more sophisticated harmonies inspired by the Post-Bossa Nova movement. Since settling in London Bakuna has become a leading figure and a reference in the Brazilian Jazz music scene in England. Mario Bakuna extensively performs in Europe and beyond at distinguished venues and festivals alongside artists such as Jean Toussaint, Liam Noble, Ricardo dos Santos, Cacau Queiroz, Edmundo Carneiro, Alain Jean Marie, Dudu Penz, and Filó Machado. The concerts of his 2 albums - ‘Where Rio de Janeiro Meets Bahia’ and ‘Brazilian Landscapes’ - toured 20 European countries, Canada, Brazil, Madagascar, Egypt, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, with great acclaim.