Marcos Valle

Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1943, Marcos Valle is a pianist, singer and composer whose career is closely linked to the history of bossa nova and Brazilian popular music. Trained in classical piano, he broke through in the early 1960s with the song “Samba de Verão” (1964), written with his brother Paulo Sérgio Valle; the track was widely covered internationally. His early albums, including “Samba Demais” (1963) and “O Compositor e o Cantor” (1965), established a style that blends bossa, samba and jazz‑inflected harmonies. In the late 1960s and through the 1970s, Valle expanded his writing toward a more electric MPB, incorporating rock, soul and funk on records such as “Viola Enluarada” (1968) and “Previsão do Tempo” (1973), while also composing theme music and scores for Brazilian television and film. After periods abroad and a quieter recording output in the 1980s, Marcos Valle returned to prominence from the late 1990s, notably with “Nova Bossa Nova” (1998), which brought him closer to acid‑jazz, nu‑bossa and European club scenes. He followed with several albums where samba, soul, jazz fusion and pop intersect — including “Sempre” (2019) — and his catalog has been regularly reissued, played by DJs and covered by new generations of musicians interested in the ties between Brazilian tradition and contemporary cultures.