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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.

After eight year of leading his bands on said genres, Marel began playing solo jazz guitar 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 as well as overseas, such as the Exit Zero Jazz Festival, the New York Guitar Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan's Bryant Park, The Deer Head Inn Jazz Club, the Chicken Bone Beach Jazz Concert Series, the Sunside Jazz Club in Paris, The Count Basie’s Vogel Theater and the Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica, Costa Rica's El Sótano Jazz Club, as well as working and playing alongside many talented and renowned musicians such as Billy Hart, Pat Bianchi, Tony Campbell, Roger Humphries, Dwayne Dolphin, Gary Mazzaroppi, Julius Tolentino, Don Aliquo Sr., Radam Schwartz, Leonieke Scheuble, Pablo Campos, Sir G. Earl Grice, Nick Scheuble, and Carlomagno Araya to name some.