GUITARRAS Y BAJOS: About The Sacred Nature of Life

"Last Chema Vílchez´s dream is to contemporary music like art is to life and human condition; myriads of feelings, thoughts, expressions, behaviors, searchings and hopes. Everything worked in an exceptional, intense way and with a enormous emotional load, with the priceless contribution of aknowledged world-class artists; the impressive voice of Shem Schneck in "Through the Sky" and "Thirty" even shakes the most hard-hearted ones, up to great players as John Patitucci, Dave Weckl, Alex Acuña, Richard Bona, Mitchel Forman and Dave Carpenter, all of them musicians who have known to print their own personality in the framework that Vílchez had prepared respecting the art of each one of them. But we are talking about Chema… The artistic vitality of "The Sacred Nature of Life" sails along ten themes that affect listeners in an irremediable and almost unconscious way, incredibly direct, so one perceives a huge emotional impact, being difficult to overcome it and return to one´s reality. The immersion in Chema´s music is such as the listener needs to listen back again this record to feel a new art and return to the emotion. One ask himself why is so easily absorbed when listens to this CD, and, sorry for appropriations of expressions, the reason is the golden that captivates the listener in a paradise of lunatics. The spell will bewitch so much musicians as profanes. Chema has opened his heart to share the eternity of his music. I am going to close my eyes and think about the CD title, I want to return to sail impelled by Chema´s guitar ".

GUITARRA TOTAL: About The Sacred Nature of Life

"Surely, most of readers are not familiar with Chema Vílchez´s name, and this probes the difficulty of being a prophet in ones´s own land, even more difficult if someone bets on no commercial music, like contemporary jazz is nowadays. For people who do not know it, Vílchez is one of the musicians with more international prestige in Spain, and this is not by chance, confirming it in his second CD. Chema, although he was born and initiated his career in the world of music in Madrid, has developed the most of his career in USA, surrounded with illustrious musicians as Scott Henderson or Robben Ford, the bass player John Patitucci or the drummer Dave Weckl (these two last ones have collaborated on this CD). The Sacred Nature of Life is an excellent work that gives credit to the Vílchez´s raised expectations in music. In the CD we can find a definite style, with a deep identity, that is precisely the most important objective for most of musicians".

CUADERNOS DE JAZZ: About The Dream of the Navigator

"For his début, Chema Vílchez has chosen a damned gender: jazz-rock. A style that, in spite of some people opinions, is still alive, but almost condemned to clandestine market, due to the little support and consideration that some and others give him; because some of them think of him as a virtuoso and others think of him as untied of tradition. Although I don´t like using the word "jazz-rock", it is practically necessary in order to distinguish it from fusion. We are attending a high level début, focused on a musical concept of difficult access. Vilchez´s and his illustrious companions´s virtuosity neither can be bought neither is for sale, purely and simply obeys the beat of his heart, in his emotional side, and hard and disciplined work, in his technical side. However, of course, there is always somebody who may consider this as free exhibitions, cold music, etc. Vílchez (Madrid,1967) shows not to have wasted his time. His trips through the northamerican jungle (you know, where someone kicks a bucket of rubbish and thousands of musicians searching for an employ appear ) are selfevident here. Everyone can percieve that he has socialized with upper class, that Californian élite that, precisely, adorns this meritorious record. His control over the global shades of contemporary guitar is amazing, embracing all the range of instruments (plugged or unplugged), techniques, tunes, modes, scales, harmonies. About this, careful listening (and documented, of course), lead us to Scott Henderson and his Tribal Tech, to Allan Holdsworth, also to Frank Gambale (less than the previous ones), and to all a bouquet of clues that, in another way, show us possible influences of this promising guitar hero: some of ECM, Will Ackerman, Pat Metheny… Because here, not everything is dizzy scales, high voltages, millimetered arrangements and powerful solos, there are also four quiet samples of deep lyricism (# 3, 5, 7 and 10), and an acoustic latin (Inocence), where, anyway, the melody points up.
Honesty, I think that this CD deserves, at least, to be listened, and that it is a turnning point, considering the poor Spanish panorama of fusion. And the book of poems enclosed with the CD… Something really unknown here".

TODAS LAS NOVEDADES : About The Dream of the Navigator

"Unfortunately, we cannot dare say that fusion gender has too many protagonists among Spanish musicians. Neither we can presume of having a recording production that sets us up as an important market for artists. Subsequently, it is better few and high quality records than many and debatable ones. The unanimity around Chema Vílchez´s first album comes to confirm the premise. A record as The Dream of the Navigator deserves five years of drought among our musicians. Thus, not only exacting and expecting audience has recognized it, but, all the musicians who have participated in this album: true masters in each of their instruments".

GUITAR PLAYER MAGAZINE: About The Sacred Nature of Life

"Chema Vílchez´s name is already known to many of Guitar Player readers, since we published an interview with him when he released his first work, The Dream of the Navigator. Now he introduces The Sacred Nature of Life, his latest CD, surrounded (again) with musicians of the highest caliber as: Dave Weckl, John Patitucci, Mitchel Forman, Alex Acuña, Richard Bona, Dave Carpenter and Shem Schneck. Working with top musicians like them implies a risk, since one can remain in frank disadvantage facing them, but Chema (the same as in the previous occasion) succeeds. With these collaborations, and knowing the previous Vilchez´s work, it is impossible not to think that The Sacred Nature of Life will be a work of the hightest level, an exercise of style where does not fit vulgarity, although Chema allows himself to flirt with rock music, contemporary music or "possibly commercial" squemes, all united with the common denominator of jazz in all his wide meaning".

MADRID MUSICA: About The Dream of the Navigator

"It is not ordinary a Spanish musician taking a risk of recording a CD of jazz-fusion, and, besides, having a very high quality this work - not only staying inside our borders, as it is usual-. Because of it, Chema Vílchez the guitarist has counted on Eric Marienthal the saxophonist, Alex Acuña the percusionist, Steve Hunt the pianist, Gary Willis the bass player and Chad Wackerman the drummer - in addition to the contribution of many others -. A record where the guitar dominates, so much acoustic as electric- with its respective synthetizers-, that walks from extremely delicious themes to others in which the rhythmical presence is predominant. And it is because the dream of a navigator has no limits".

VOICE: About The Dream of the Navigator

"Chema Vílchez is the transmitter of a knowledge reinforced after very many experiences and studies, carried out with Scott Henderson, Eric Marienthal, Alex Acuña and Frank Gambale, among others. The huge knowledge of all of them has found a platform of experimentation, from where Vílchez the alchemist has carried out his more inspired inventions, creating an enviroment for his poems that, recently, has been published as a record, titled "The Dream of the Navigator". With a sonorous format completely inusual in the Spanish recording production, Chema has a very large sonorous palette, whose, since the first listening, shows to have done brushes in that American canvas that equally gathers jazz and rock genders. His freetless guitar has Latin push and American bellows, and, there is a very different conception of the sonorous space in the collective improvisation of his quintet, compared with usual national jazz programmes"

"In 1995 Chema Vílchez the guitarist (Madrid, 1967) released his first CD, "The Dream of the Navigator", and became the first Spanish musician capable of engraving and being surrounded with some of the best jazz musicians of the American scene. The specialized press recognized Vílchez as a promising musician, exquisite and, especially, surprising. Chema, after a period of concerts and teaching classes at the Institute of Music & Technology, that he himself founded, decided to return to Los Angeles to find inspiration and support for his second album. After a year of playing there and meeting others artists, he achieved to gather some of the most prestigious: from the bass player J. Patitucci or the drummer D. Weckl, to the pianist M. Forman or the percusionist A. Acuña.

His work, "The Sacred Nature of Life", is an opportunity for music, where the sonorous universe of Chema is opened both to the musicians who plays and to audience and listeners. When you listen to his music a musical spectrum full of shades dawns, passages that escape and appear in subsequent listenings. We can always return to this universe, to hear the space, to feel the time, to find only for you the inner message that is hidden. This album begins with a surprising theme built on a risky guitar solo, "The Golden Reason", and later, rhythmical themes as "My Secret Garden" and "The Paradise of Lunatics" hold hands with extremely delicious ballads, "Song for María" or "She is Waiting". We find themes inside the latest concept of Modern Jazz as "Dissonance and Reality" or "The People that We Believed to Know", with great quality sung themes, as "Through the Sky" and "Thirty". The end of the CD with the theme "The Sacred Nature of Life" is really exquisite, closer to contemporary music than to any other style. Without doubt, ten original and surprising themes that many music lovers will enjoy as an authentic piece of art

When in a work we can emphasize elements such as sensibility, originality, elaboration and technique among others, does not fit doubt, we find ourselves in front of something rather unusual at our time. If, besides, the result has personality enough not to be catalogued into any style or tendency and, moreover, he has the exceptional contribution of musicians who have been able to be perfectly adapted to the circumstances, it would only need to be listened by someone interested in demanding all those qualities".

"Chema Vílchez is one of the most highly reputed guitarists in Spain. Over the last years he has collaborated, recorded and played in live with the most important big names of modern jazz. He studied in Los Angeles with Robben Ford, Scott Henderson and others, standing out his sensibility, originality, virtuosity and creativity. He has also recorded various albums and regularly plays with John Patitucci, Mitchel Forman,... In this occasion Vílchez introduces his last CD ,"The Sacred Nature of Life", at Clamores. This Club is proud of having on its stage a Spanish musician who succeeds beyond our borders".

"Chema Vílchez is considered as one of the most important names of the Spanish jazz scene. His music is a mixture of jazz fusion with contemporary on the same wavelength of guitarists as Pat Metheny or Scott Henderson. His sound as a band is similar to the one of groups as Chick Corea Electric Band or Steps Ahead. Chema Vílchez, a regular one of the nights of Madrid, has shown with his last and applauded CD that Spanish jazz, despite of being scarce, has a few names that do not envy the foreigner ones. In The Dream of the Navigator, he has had the international contribution of geat musicians as Eric Marienthal, Alex Acuña and Chad Wackerman".