Marel Hidalgo is a eighteen-year old guitarist, banjoist, arranger, orchestrator 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 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 ever since, he 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 jazz group, in which he blends reggae, calypso, soca, dub, rocksteady, and mento with jazz, or fronting organ trios in the straight-ahead tradition.

Some of the places he has performed at 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 Rose Theather at Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Chicken Bone Beach Jazz Festival, the Blue Note NYC, the Deer Head Inn Jazz Club, the Sunside Jazz Club in Paris, Count Basie’s Vogel Theater, Teatro Nacional and El Sótano Jazz Club in San José, Costa Rica, as well as working and playing alongside many jazz legends such as drummers Billy Hart, Roger Humphries, Winard Harper, Johnathan Blake, Tommy Campbell, Adam Nussbaum, Byron Landham and Carlomagno Araya, bassists John Lee, Dwayne Dolphin, and Gary Mazzaroppi, organists Pat Bianchi, Radam Schwartz, Jared Gold, pianists Monty Alexander and Orrin Evans, percussionists Larry McDonald, and Felipe Fournier, and saxophonists Tony Campbell, Don Aliquo Sr., Antoine Roney, Julius Tolentino, to name some.​