Marel Hidalgo is a seventeen-year old guitarist and bandleader from New Jersey. He began playing guitar at the age of four and debuted in public with a solo show just a few months later. By the age of six he formed his first band, performing during those early years a variety of musical genres, including blues, reggae, progressive rock, Latin, funk, country, bluegrass and fusion very successfully at a local and national level making presentations in places such as The Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland -several times-, The Denver Day of Rock in Colorado or being featured on the Harry Connick Jr.’s TV show on national television.

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After eight year of leading his bands on said genres, Marel began performing solo jazz guitar concerts, and shortly after he lead his first straight-ahead jazz trio. His playing quickly caught the attention of the jazz scene in the area and in the last year alone, Marel has been highly active playing in jazz clubs, venues and festivals in the East Coast and the Midwest, as well as overseas, such as in France and Costa Rica, performing in prestigious venues, clubs and festivals, usually either leading his Jamaican/Caribbean jazz quartet, in which he blends reggae, calypso, soca, dub, rocksteady, and mento with jazz, or leading organ trios in the straight-ahead tradition.

 

Such places include the Exit Zero Jazz Festival, the New York Guitar Festival in Bryant Park, The Ellnora Guitar Festival at the Krannert Center For The Arts, The Chicken Bone Beach Jazz Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Deer Head Inn Jazz Club, the Sunside Jazz Club in Paris, Count Basie’s Vogel Theater, el Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica, Costa Rica's El Sótano Jazz Club, and Amón Solar, as well as working and playing alongside many jazz legends such as drummers Billy Hart, Roger Humphries, Tommy Campbell, G. Earl Grice, Carlomagno Araya, bassists John Lee, Dwayne Dolphin, Gary Mazzaroppi, organists Pat Bianchi, Radam Schwartz, Leonieke Scheuble and saxophonists Tony Campbell, Don Aliquo Sr., Julius Tolentino, and many more.​