PRESS /
El Punt Avui
January 2026
"What Makes a Melody sound Cuban?
The year 2025 has been a very productive one for the clarinetist and composer from Girona Oriol Marès (27), who released two albums: Estuarium, recorded by the Oriol Marès & Talal Fayad Quartet—ranked 9th on this newspaper’s list of the best albums from Girona of the year published in December—and, more recently, Turpial guajiro, the debut of Cinco en Clave, another multicultural Latin jazz ensemble based in Rotterdam, the Dutch city where Marès completed his studies and settled in order to project his music worldwide. While the Estuarium project—completed in Girona thanks to an international residency at La Marfà, with the Syrian Talal Fayad, the Andalusian Lucas Zegrí, and the Greek Thodoris Ziarkas—remains very much alive on stage and with the prospect of a second quartet album in 2026, Oriol Marès presents the Cinco en Clave album as “a more author-driven, very personal work, which in physical format is available as a limited-edition CD.
Recorded over three days last July at JV2 Studios in Rotterdam, Turpial guajiro is, to a large extent, the sonic embodiment of Marès’s long theoretical journey through Cuban musical heritage. The album opens with a composition by Marès, Danzón de noche, and continues with another piece by him, Kyoko, dedicated to a very dear friend of his, the Japanese artist Kyoko Miyamoto, author of the painting that illustrates the album cover. Another contribution by Marès as a composer is Opusetto, in which he transforms his Opus 1 for string quartet into a merengue, incorporating the opening of the iconic Solfeggietto by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.
Article by Xavier Castillón
Featured in El Punt Avui, 8th January 2026
The Clarinet Magazine
December 2025
"The festival's Jazz Night will spotlight Japanese jazz icons Eiji Taniguchi and Ko-Ko-Ya, alongside Spain's Oriol Marès & Talal Fayad Quartet."
ClarinetFest® 2026 will be held July 7–11 in the coastal city of Incheon, South Korea—the first ICA festival in Asia since the 2005 Tokyo ClarinetFest®. Set in Songdo International City, a modern district known for its cultural and architectural innovation, the event will bring together clarinetists from around the world for a week of performances, lectures, and community.
The festival’s Jazz Night will spotlight Japanese jazz icons Eiji Taniguchi and Ko-Ko-Ya, alongside Spain’s Oriol Marès & Talal Fayad Quartet. Afternoon headliner concerts will present the vast spectrum of clarinet artistry, from historically informed performances on period instruments to cutting-edge works for clarinet and electronics. The festival will close with a final concert featuring a Korean premier wind ensemble with soloists Javier Llopis (Tenerife Professional Conservatory of Music), Soo-Young Lee (Estonian National Symphony Orchestra), Hosup Song (Chugye University for the Arts), and Jose Franch-Ballester (University of British Columbia), a fitting culmination to a week of extraordinary artistry and international camaraderie.
Article by Wonkak Kim
Originally published in The Clarinet 53/1 (December 2025).
Revista Caramella
December 2025
"A fiercely contemporary music, yet firmly rooted in Mediterranean traditions."
ORIOL MARÈS & TALAL FAYAD QUARTET
Estuarium
Estuarium Records, 2025
Oriol Marès is a clarinetist from Girona, now based in Rotterdam, who plays both clarinet and bass clarinet. His international trajectory has led him to join forces with Syrian oud player Talal Fayad, with whom he has formed a duo that blends Latin and Arab traditions under a jazz umbrella that at times becomes the true protagonist of the project.
Together with Andalusian percussionist Lucas Zegrí and Greek double bassist Thodoris Ziarkas, Oriol and Talal have completed a remarkable quartet based in the Netherlands, which has released its first album, Estuarium. The record stands out for its strong character, successfully closing the circle by combining Arabic modal music with Latin polyrhythms in a rich mixture shaped by jazz improvisation.
Thus, while each member of the group maintains a distinct identity as a soloist, the quartet’s collective sound acquires a unique and deeply rewarding personality, as if the sum of the four instrumentalists were in fact a multiplication of factors. This interaction ultimately reshapes the final result, yielding compositions that go beyond any label—such as the consecutive performances of “Double,” composed by Oriol, and “Ma7Dood,” by Talal—which may well constitute the most exciting part of the album: fiercely contemporary, yet firmly rooted in Mediterranean traditions.
The album closes with a collectively authored piece, “Girona,” which, beyond being Oriol’s hometown, is also the city where the quartet recorded this work. It is, without a doubt, a small but finely crafted improvised joke through which all four musicians pay tribute to this singular Catalan city.
Review by Ferran Riera
Featured in Caramella - Music and Popular Culture, n. 53
Catalunya Música - 3Cat
December 2025
[CAT] Oriol Marès: M'agradaria que les etiquetes al voltant de la música es desdibuixéssin"
El clarinetista i compositor Oriol Marès ens ha presentat el nou disc del seu projecte Cinco en Clave, titulat "Turpial Guajiro", publicat pel segell Estuarium Records. A més, al final de l'entrevista, ens ha ofert una actuació musical en directe que veureu a la nostra web i a la playlist de 3CatCultura a YouTube.
[ENG] Oriol Marès:
“I’d like the labels around music to blur.”
“The clarinetist and composer Oriol Marès presented the new album from his project Cinco en Clave, titled Turpial Guajiro, released by the label Estuarium Records. In addition, at the end of the interview, he offered us a live musical performance, which you can watch on our website and on the 3CatCultura playlist on YouTube.”
Interview by Marta Lanau i Albert Torrens
Featured in Assaig General, 3Cat
LINK ENTREVISTA (Català)
De Klarinet
September/October 2025
“Music can give a lot of strength”
"In the café De Overburen, opposite Amersfoort Central Station, I meet the young Spanish (bass) clarinetist Oriol Marès, who graduated with distinction from Codarts in Rotterdam this July. This is the first installment in a new series about young emerging performers, a category that Oriol, at 27, fits perfectly into."
Interview by Henk Jansen
Featured interview in the Dutch Clarinet Magazine, De Klarinet, 160
De Klarinet
September 2025
"Oriol shows here that he masters the Bb clarinet to perfection in a virtuosic solo"
"Estuarium by Oriol Marès. This young, originally Spanish, clarinetist (clarinet and bass clarinet) graduated cum laude from Codarts in Rotterdam, where he studied, among others, with Alex Simu. In 2019 he was part of the Ricciotti ensemble and toured with the Amsterdam Klezmer Band. Together with ud player Talal Fayad, he forms a quartet. Talal Fayad is originally from Syria. With the London-based, originally Greek, bassist Thodoris Ziarkas and the percussionist/drummer Lucas Zegri from Granada (Spain), this quartet offers a huge range of cultural backgrounds to draw from. All members have also contributed compositions to the Estuarium project."
CD Review by Henk Jansen
Featured interview in the De Klarinet, 160
440 Jazz & Clàssica
June-September 2025
"10 talents of Catalan jazz"
“Some say that jazz is a genre of the 20th century, but reality departs from the cliché and shows that this music is still very much alive, with new Catalan talents continuing to enrich the national jazz scene and export it around the world. A polyhedral vision allows us to listen to and admire very different projects, ranging from mystical connections to Mediterranean or Latin American roots, passing through links with the avant-garde of the 20th century or ties to the singer-songwriter tradition. We present 10 young artists who are revitalizing the national jazz scene.”
Carla González, Alba Pujals, Oriol Marès, Gerard Chumilla, Alba Armengou, Isaac Romagosa, Mar Vilaseca, Víctor Carrascosa, Camil Arcarazo, Anggie Obin
Article by Sergi Núñez
Featured in 440 Clàssica & Jazz - Enderrock, 91
La Vanguardia
March 2025
Oriol Marès, jazz para el alma: “La música debe llegar a la mente, el corazón y las caderas”
La vocación de Oriol Marès despertó pronto. A los cinco años ya estudiaba canto coral y lenguaje musical en Claudefaula, en Girona. Aunque sus primeros instrumentos fueron de percusión, el cajón y la batería, a los nueve encontró en el clarinete esa parte melódica que echaba en faltaba con las baquetas.
[...]
“Entendí mucho más tarde que tal vez mi salto al clarinete lo di por la influencia de un disco del cubano Compay Segundo (cantante de Buena Vista Social Club) que mi madre ponía sin parar en el coche. En aquel disco había un trío de clarinetes que me fascinaba, y el año pasado viajé a Cuba por una beca y conocí a los músicos que grabaron ese disco. Fue increíble. Aunque Segundo ya había fallecido, conocí a los músicos que trabajaron con él. Fue una experiencia fantástica y estamos en contacto desde entonces, compartiendo historias musicales y partituras”, relata Marès desde Rotterdam, donde reside desde hace seis años y estudia un máster en Codarts.
[...]
“Hemos llamado al nuevo álbum Estuarium, donde un río se encuentra con el mar, porque es la mejor metáfora para explicar este encuentro de culturas”, añade Marès. “Nuestro proyecto nació en Holanda en el 2022 en Culture Shock, un festival que junta a dos músicos que no se conocen y les dan una fecha para tocar. Talal Fayad es experto en música árabe y turca y mi especialidad es el jazz latino. En los ensayos posteriores al concierto, vimos que el Mediterráneo era nuestro punto en común, y así empezamos a crear”, explica sobre la formación de la Oriol Marès & Talal Fayad Quartet.
Entrevista por Alex Jover
Magazine La Vanguardia - Edición Marzo