Marcio's mother Neida had passed away last February, and one of his brothers, Nilton, died a month ago. Marcio is survived by his other brother, attorney João Augusto, and his current wife Cristina Cordeiro, a respected fashion designer.

Like all the masters, he kept improving and crafting his art all the time. It's impossible to list all the other Marcio Montarroyos in Rio, but it cannot go on without mentioning two outstanding engagements with the Stone Alliance group (specially the last one, in 1978, at the "Clara Nunes Theater", with Mutantes' guitar hero Sergio Dias Baptista as a guest and the late Brecker Brothers' keyboardist Mark Gray added to the Stone Alliance line-up); the opening night of the "Mistura Fina" club in Ipanema (at the Garcia D'Ávila Street) back in 1980, when Yana Purim, Sergio Vid, Marcio's wife Cristina, and promoter Françoise Bloch; the concert with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Edu Lobo (taped on studio for the "Edu & Tom" album) were in the audience and, more recently, a very intimate setting at the now-defunct "Partitura" club in 2002, when Marcio was backed only by a keyboardist. Of course, his beautiful arrangement of Pixinguinha's "Carinhoso" (one of the most famous and best-selling instrumental recordings ever in Brazil!) was in the book.

Marcio recorded many solo albums in Brazil and in the USA for other labels. Two of them ("Magic Moment" and "Carioca") came out on Columbia in the early 80s, but both failed commercially because they were fusion-oriented projects in a time that Wynton Marsalis’ retro power was rising and rising...

Two very ironic things happenned: Marcio’s first album on Columbia, “Magic Moment”, had been originally intended for release on Lorimar Records, a small company created by German producer Eckhart Rahn (Marcio's manager in Europe at that time), who later would would found the Black Sun label. Well, at the time of the album release, Lorimar broke up. Eckhart offered "Magic Moment" to CBS, Inc. and they accepted to release it; the sad part is that "Magic Moment" and Wynton’s debut for Columbia were promoted together in the very same ad printed by CBS in DownBeat and other mags….

Needless to say, the big impact of Wynton’s album and Miles Davis' comeback project "The Man With The Horn" transformed Marcio’s album in a “death release” in the hands of Dr. George Butler (Columbia vice president of jazz and progressive A&R) and Vernon Slaughter, vice president of black music and jazz promotion.

Sadly Marcio Montarroyos died December 12, 2007 in Rio de Janeiro after a cruel four-month battle against lung cancer. He and his music will be sadly missed.

View On The Web :- YouTube