Marmoucha Orchestra

Maripepa Contreras is one of the few jazz oboists in the world. Credited with a DownBeat award, a background in both classical and jazz education, and an insatiable musical curiosity, she has developed her own musical language in which precise notation and free improvisation naturally coexist. As artistic coordinator, resident arranger, and one of the co-founders of the Marmoucha Orchestra - the Amsterdam-based ensemble that has organically brought together jazz, global, and composed music in original productions since 2019 - Contreras has both the platform and the orchestra to further deepen this language.

With Sexi Firmum Iulium, her distinct artistic voice comes fully to the fore. The title refers to Sexi, the Phoenician trading city on the southern Spanish coast that became known as Sexi Firmum Iulium under Roman rule: present-day Almuñécar, where Contreras grew up. From the polyphonic landscape of Amsterdam, she approaches the layered history of her birthplace through a creative act of imagination.

Drawing on classical, jazz, and Mediterranean sound worlds, she translates this heritage into a contemporary musical language in which Andalusian rhythm, Mediterranean melody, orchestral colour, and improvisation converge. Raw, precise, and free at once. The result is music through which she both acknowledges her origins and writes her own future.