Maurizio Caldura Núñez, known to friends and collaborators as "Bicio," was an Italian jazz saxophonist who built his entire career in the Veneto region around Venice. Born in 1959, he grew up musically in Mestre and recorded almost exclusively for small independent labels based in his home region, above all Caligola Records. He died in 1998 at the age of 39. No source found for this profile documents an exact birth date or birthplace beyond "grew up musically in Mestre" - the claim is consistent across every available biographical source, and nothing in his recorded output, his label affiliations, his working groups, or his teaching career points anywhere outside Italy.

Caldura specialized on tenor saxophone but played alto and soprano just as regularly. His earliest documented recording activity dates to 1977-1980, in home and studio sessions made in Venice and Mestre that were restored decades later and issued as I Bin Do (2018, Hans & Babilonia), on which he is Discogs-credited on tenor saxophone. His main-artist catalog is three leader albums for Caligola: Static Energy (1996), Murrina Latina (1997), which leans into Latin-jazz rhythm and imagery across a track list naming Veracruz, Playa del Agua and Murrina Latina itself, and the posthumous Bittersweet (1999), recorded with pianist and drummer Luigi Bonafede and released after Caldura's death.

His most significant working relationship was with pianist and composer Giorgio Gaslini: Caldura is listed as a member of the Giorgio Gaslini Octet on Discogs and is individually credited on tenor and soprano saxophone on tracks drawn from Gaslini's catalog on the 2013 compilation Giorgio Gaslini (The Complete Remastered Recordings On Dischi Della Quercia). He also had a sustained collaboration with singer Tiziana Ghiglioni, playing alto, tenor and soprano saxophone as a member of her working sextet on two 1998 Philology albums, My Essential Duke Ellington and Battisti!. On My Essential Duke Ellington, Caldura (alto and tenor saxophone) shares the same Discogs release credit with Lee Konitz, who plays alto saxophone on the same album - a directly verified studio connection, not merely a shared reputation. Earlier in his career he recorded as a sideman for bandleaders Lanfranco Malaguti (Tip Of The Hat!, 1987, tenor saxophone) and Mimmo Cafiero (I Go, 1989; Moon And Twenty Five, 1991, soprano and tenor saxophone), both fellow artists on the Splasc(h) Records roster that anchored Italy's regional jazz scene in the 1980s.

Caldura was also a Discogs-listed member of pianist Luca Flores' Matt Jazz Quintet, appearing on the group's Sharp Blues (1986) and "Where Extremes Meet" (1987), both Discogs-tagged Jazz/post-bop, and, after his death, on the archival release Matt Jazz Quintet Live (2003), on which he is credited on tenor and soprano saxophone. With pianist Marcello Tonolo and tenor saxophonist Pietro Tonolo, he co-founded Keptorchestra, a Venice-based big band whose two Discogs-documented studio albums brought in visiting American soloists: Steve Lacy plays soprano saxophone alongside Caldura (credited alto and tenor saxophone) on Sweet Sixteen (1994, Caligola), and Joe Lovano plays tenor and soprano saxophone alongside him (credited alto saxophone) on Miss Etna (1996, Caligola) - a session that also credits fellow saxophonists Francesco Bearzatti and Bruno Marini. Contemporary accounts of Keptorchestra also name Konitz among that band's collaborators specifically, but no Discogs release credit independently confirms Caldura performing alongside Konitz inside Keptorchestra itself - the verified connection between them is the Ghiglioni session above, not a Keptorchestra recording. Separately, in the early-to-mid 1990s Caldura played saxophone on a handful of releases by the Italian acid-jazz outfit Jestofunk (Discogs-tagged Electronic/Funk-Soul, not Jazz) - a small non-jazz session credit alongside a core catalog that is otherwise entirely jazz.

Beyond performing, Caldura co-founded the Thelonious Monk music school in Dolo in 1987 with Marcello Tonolo, one of the first dedicated jazz schools in the Veneto region; it later relocated to Mira and remains active today. Saxophonist Michele Polga, often described as his finest student, has carried Caldura's teaching legacy forward. Two years after his death, the school's own Thelonious Monk Big Band recorded Goofy's Dance (2000, Caligola), which includes three of Caldura's own compositions - "Goofy's Dance," "Playa Del Agua" and "Bradipo," all drawn from Murrina Latina - credited to him as writer and performed by the ensemble as tribute. Musicians close to him also documented a live memorial concert on Rememberin' Bicio (Live At The 4th Nord-Est Jazz-Fest) (2002, Caligola), featuring trumpeter Paolo Fresu, tenor saxophonist Pietro Tonolo, pianist Marcello Tonolo and vocalist Carla Marcotulli among others - a memorial performance rather than a recorded collaboration with Caldura himself. A further tribute, Six Friends for Bicio, led by Marcello Tonolo with Giampaolo Casati and Michele Polga, has been performed at festivals including Dolomiti Ski Jazz and BargaJazz as recently as 2024 and 2025, keeping Caldura's compositions in circulation more than a quarter-century after his death.

Caldura's recorded work sits mostly inside the post-bop and hard-bop mainstream that anchored Italy's regional jazz labels - Splasc(h), Caligola and Philology - through the 1980s and 90s. His two completed studio albums as leader show a real range within that idiom: Static Energy (1996) is a straight-ahead date, while Murrina Latina (1997) turns toward Latin jazz, built around a rhythm section and a set of original compositions named for Latin American and Mediterranean places and images. His work with Giorgio Gaslini and inside Keptorchestra, the big band he co-founded that recorded alongside Steve Lacy and Joe Lovano, placed him in more ambitious large-ensemble settings than his own leader dates. His teaching career, carried on through the Thelonious Monk school he co-founded in Dolo, extended the same tradition to a new generation of Veneto musicians, and the school's own big band has kept several of his compositions in active repertoire since his death.