quotes
“Wellmann’s sparkling, clear tones dance”
All About Jazz
“Mario is a technically brilliant, yet also deeply musical guitarist. Every time I hear him, he sounds better than the time before. He also writes intricate, engaging, and yes, deeply musical compositions.”
Davy Mooney (Brian Blade, John Pizzarelli)
"Mario is one of the smartest people I know, and it comes through his music with clarity and elegance."
Noel Johnston (Kenny Wheeler, Vinnie Colaiuta, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano)
"[...] a master of tone, touch and taste. His guitar playing combines both the complexities of jazz and the soulfulness of blues to give him an amazingly compelling and captivating sound.”
Quincy Davis (Benny Golson, Christian McBride, Aaron Parks, Roy Hargrove).
bio
Short
Mario Wellmann is a Chilean jazz guitarist, composer, and music theorist based in New York City and Austin (TX). He has performed at leading venues across the U.S., South America, and Europe, including The Django, Jazz Forum Arts, Elkhart Jazz Festival, An Die Musik, Sala Master at Universidad de Chile, and Thelonious Lugar de Jazz, and has shared the stage with jazz luminaries Kurt Elling, Sinne Eeg, and Allison Wedding. In 2022 he received two DownBeat Student Music Awards, and in 2026 he was awarded Chile's Fondo de la Música — the country's equivalent of the National Endowment for the Arts — to record his debut album in New York City. Mario is currently a PhD Fellow in Music Theory at Columbia University, where he also serves as an assistant editor of the journal Current Musicology.
medium
Mario Wellmann is a Chilean jazz guitarist, composer, and music theorist based in New York City and Austin (TX). He has performed across the United States, South America, and Europe at venues including The Django, Jazz Forum Arts, Elkhart Jazz Festival, An Die Musik, Takoma Station, Monks Jazz, Soapbox Gallery, Sala Master at Universidad de Chile, and Thelonious Lugar de Jazz, and has shared the stage with jazz luminaries Kurt Elling, Sinne Eeg, and Allison Wedding. Between 2021 and 2023 he recorded albums with the Alexa Torres Quartet, the Simeon Davis Group, and the award-winning UNT Latin Jazz Lab and UNT Jazz Singers. In 2022 he received two DownBeat Student Music Awards, one of them with The West Mulberry Trio — a project he co-led.
In 2026, Mario was awarded Chile's Fondo de la Música — the country's equivalent of the National Endowment for the Arts — to produce his debut album as a leader, to be recorded in NYC. He is currently a PhD Fellow in Music at Columbia University, where he also serves as an assistant editor of Current Musicology. His research combines music theory with computational methods and draws on an interdisciplinary background that includes a master's degree in Neuroscience and professional training in Speech-Language Pathology.
long
Mario Wellmann is a Chilean jazz guitarist, composer, and music theorist based in New York City and Austin (TX). His music synthesizes jazz traditions with contemporary aesthetics, drawing on his cultural background and interdisciplinary training to create work that engages the nuanced, often unspoken dimensions of human experience.
Mario has performed in a wide range of venues across the United States, South America, and Europe — including The Django, Jazz Forum Arts, Elkhart Jazz Festival, An Die Musik, Takoma Station, Monks Jazz, Soapbox Gallery, Jazz Corner, Sala Master at Universidad de Chile, and Thelonious Lugar de Jazz — and has shared the stage with Kurt Elling, Sinne Eeg, and Allison Wedding. Between 2021 and 2023 he recorded albums with the Alexa Torres Quartet, the Simeon Davis Group, and the award-winning UNT Latin Jazz Lab and UNT Jazz Singers. In 2022, he graduated first in his class from the University of North Texas with a BM in Jazz Studies, where he studied guitar with Davy Mooney and Noel Johnston, improvisation with Philip Dizack and Dave Meder, and jazz arranging with Rich DeRosa. That same year, he received two DownBeat Student Music Awards — one with The West Mulberry Trio, a project he co-led.
In 2026, Mario was awarded Chile's Fondo de la Música — the country's equivalent of the National Endowment for the Arts — to produce his debut album as a leader, to be recorded in New York City with engineer Joseph Branciforte. He is currently a PhD Fellow in Music at Columbia University, where he also serves as an assistant editor of Current Musicology. His research spans computational approaches to analyze jazz, including probabilistic modeling of idiomatic jazz rhythms, and evidence-based learning in jazz pedagogy. His scientific work in neurobiology — focused on synaptic plasticity and astroglial signaling — has been published in Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, The Neuroscientist, and Neurobiology of Disease, and his work on retrieval practice in jazz education appeared in Update: Applications of Research in Music Education.
