Marco Tamayo was born in La Havana, Cuba, where he started playing the guitar at the age of three with his father. He studied with Antonio Alberto Rodríguez and Leo Brouwer, Harold Gramatges, and later in Europe at the University of Music in Munich (class of J. Clerch) and at the Mozarteum University of Arts in Salzburg were he studied with Eliot Fisk (guitar), Rainner Schmid (violinist), Anthony Spiri (cembalist), Keneth Gilbert (cembalist), among others.

When he made his first public appearance at the age of six, national TV channels in Cuba presented him as a prodigy young talent of the guitar. At the age of ten he was already touring former DDR and Bulgaria with his brother.

During his study Tamayo won major International Guitar Competitions like the Michele Pittaluga Int. Guitar Competition, Cittá de Alessandria, in 1999 and the Andrés Segovia Int. Guitar Competition in Granada, Spain.

He collaborated with important orchestras and chamber ensembles like the Philharmonic of Torino under the baton of Paolo Ferrara, the Chamber Orchestra of Aix en Provence (France), under the baton of Philip Bender, the Philharmonic of Tampere (Finland), the Philharmonic of La Habana under the Baton of Leo Brouwer, the TransArt Orchestra of Salzburg conducted by Kurt Redel, the Chamber Orchestra of St. Petersburg, and performing in Aix en Provence, France, and many others.

Tamayo’s official debut took place at the Chopin-Pleyel hall in Paris, in 1999. In March 2000 he embarked on his first Italian concert tour, giving ten concerts in the region of Piedmont, in Milan, Turin, Alessandria, Piacenza, and elsewhere. After the tour, the national Italian newspapers “La Stampa” called him: Il Re della Chitarra (The King of the guitar).

On December 14th 2006 Marco Tamayo received the “Cittadinanza Onoraria”, Honourable Citizen of the city of Alessandria , in Piedmont , Italy , and is the second guitarist, after Maestro Alirio Díaz, who received this honour.

Marco recently arrived in Sydney to take up a new position at the Conservatorium of Music as an Associate Lecturer in Guitar