Celia Chavez
Gig Seeker Pro

Celia Chavez

Los Angeles, California, United States

Los Angeles, California, United States
Band Jazz Singer/Songwriter

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Crowds hush as Celia Chavez sings with gusto"

Does TV imitate life, or vice versa?

The crowd on this Wednesday night is a variation of television's offerings on the same night. Casting directors from "The Bachelor" might find some "talent" here, amongst the navel-flashers in tight tops and slick-looking off-duty lawyers and brokers. To the rear of the place, a batch of guys in baseball caps and shorts look like they're ready for "The Best Damned Sports Show Ever."

Martinis, glasses of wine and microbrews go down fast. A young woman holds a lit cigarette like a dagger, another at a side booth exclaims "I want his measurements!" The guys in the back drunk-talk in each other's faces.

This is the Paragon, a bar at the top of Queen Anne where style normally dominates substance, ideas go to die and who's dating whom is the only news that counts. War - what war? Some people here are so drunk, you wonder if they could spell SARS.

This is far from the only place where people go to escape real life, but, unlike the many band-friendly bars in Seattle, the music here is definitely deep in the background.

The band returns from a break and drops into a pleasing instrumental jam; no one pays attention, as several speed past flirtation into light groping.

The singer, who looks like a young, Filipina Rita Moreno, takes her place, and in just a few notes you can tell she is good - very good. Her delivery is precise, her arrangements smooth and natural, she can sing some very pretty lines - and then break off notes that echo Janis Joplin.

She's so good, some of the Paragonians actually pay attention: Martinis pause between tabletop and lips.

The singer's name is Celia (pronounced "sell-ya") Chavez, at the beginning of ... her musical career. she is...returning to music with gusto - and some highly refined vocal chords.

The trick for her may be in deciding what her style will be: jazz, blues, R&B, pop? Perhaps all of the above, although that might make her harder to market. "It's kind of a blessing and a curse," she says of her versatility. She thinks it will help her doing diverse studio work, but might make it harder to market her own songs.

Her Paragon shows (she just finished a string of Wednesday nights there) were seeped in dance-friendly Motown/R&B hits. Her original material, the likes of "Barcelona," "Good Friday," "Tease" and "Wishing Well," is all over the place, from Burt Bacharach to alt rock - even some country.

She's been working with Jonathan Plum (who mixed or engineered albums by Candlebox, Alice in Chains and Blind Melon) on a demo that she plans to shop around New York in coming weeks. "A well-trained voice as sweet as a bird," Plum says.

Diamond-in-the-rough Chavez performs tonight at EMP's Liquid Lounge, then Saturday night at Julia's on Broadway. Both shows are free.

- by Tom Scanlon, Seattle Times reporter - The Seattle Times


"One of Seattle's most tantalizing new voices"

- Ticket Magazine - The Seattle Times


"Celia Chavez: Sailor's Daughter"

Celia Chavez’s latest CD, Sailor’s Daughter, sonically reflects the beauty and unpredictability of the oceans on which her father sailed. In it, Chavez takes the listener onto a sometimes smooth, sometimes tumultuous, always contemplative journey through love, loss, dreams, memories, and nostalgia. Yet, Sailor’s Daughter is unique in that, throughout the entire album, the mixture of disparate musical genres, the subtlety of dissonant chords, and tempo changes over an always smooth, soothing voice masterfully captures irony.

Fear of Falling Leaves is a prime example of this. Don’t be fooled by Chavez’s beautifully, smooth vocals and delivery, the playful Latin beats and basslines. Nothing is hidden through inarticulation or through metaphor. All is out there: I can see the chill across your face/your confusion at the planet’s ways/But the trees know there is no disgrace/ to become disrobed. Will you stay to see the green again?/Seasons change and seasons end/Why hide from clouds or run from rain/when rain is what the dry earth needs?… If you stay I promise you will lose/ your fear of Falling Leaves. If a tree could be this brave/for us it could be the same…We will laugh when we remember when/we were afraid of falling leaves. All of it, rain/sunshine, budding/falling leaves is, simply, present in Life and Love. Find your joy and color once again/ in your own free fall. . .she croons. Period. Yet, this is no derivative of the Byrd’s Turn! Turn! Turn! or for that matter the Book of Ecclesiastes on which that song is based. Chavez never lies to her listeners and implies that it is easy. Though wise, it is refreshingly, brutally-- smirkingly even-- honest. At points where one seemingly derives hope, the lines are accompanied by a minor chord. Similarly, at points when one seemingly experiences sadness or confusion, the vocal is accompanied by a happy sounding major chord.

Such is the message of the song and, indeed, the entire album it seems. Just when one thinks one is achieving some sort of pattern of normalcy – bam! – the weather changes. In this bedlam, there is the one, objective pattern we all can be sure of: things can and will change. Knowing, accepting, embracing this truism-- and letting go-- will help us all to gracefully get through all our seasons. Similarly, PT Barnum (both the song and the reprise) captures the quizzical, circus-like absurdity that sometimes plagues even the best of relationships and accepting that these dizzying ups and downs are actually (unfortunately?) or, perhaps, jokingly, just quite normal. As in Fear of Falling Leaves and all the other songs on this album, Chavez and all the musicians involved masterfully choose different musical genres (sometimes within one song) which not only enhance Chavez’s beautiful soothing vocals but emphasize the messages in her lyrics. Similarly, the percussion and guitar in, Dream of a Sailor, for example evokes images of young sailors’ idealistic, almost aggrandizing, ideas regarding “the key to freedom [the sailor] had found.” Yet, not all the songs bring out the “headiness” in me. The remake of Andy William’s Moon River is simply beautiful.

Sailor’s Daughter is, ultimately, about survival, living, and laughing with all Life hands you. It is about keeping one’s composure, about holding, dearly, onto dreams, hopes, and joys through ups and downs, twists and turns, in relationships and other life events, and sailing as smoothly as one can through it all.

http://www.myspace.com/celiachavez - www.soundaffects.net


Discography

"Relax" (2009) track #8 on full-lengh album Come 'N Play by House of Bamba
"Last Goodbye" (2008) single, by Robin Danar feat. Celia Chavez
Sailor's Daughter (2007) full length CD
Distant Bliss (2005) - 5- song EP
"Lose Myself In You"(2003) - title song on feature film "Inheritance" soundtrack (Scotopia Pictures)
"Never Shake Me", featured on feature film "Inheritance" soundtrack (Scotopia Pictures)
Wishing Well (2002) - 5- song EP (out of print)

Photos

Bio

The tiny but mighty Celia Chavez has spent the past several years traveling the world as a 20-Feet-From-Stardom style backup singer to stars such as Pink, Melody Gardot, Uh Huh Her and Julia Fordham. She is currently a featured vocalist and duet partner with international superstar Enrique Iglesias in his touring band, which sold out 36 arena shows on their 2014-2015 US tour, during which she sang to over a million people. 

Celia is also one half of the new songwriting duo, the Sisters of Perpetual Heartache (aka SOPH) along with fellow Los Angeles singer-songwriter Nicky Corbett. Celia's first record, Sailor's Daughter, and her most recent 5-song EP, White Flag Blue Sky, display a musical sensibility akin to Lucinda Williams, Shelby Lynne, Chrissie Hynde and Joni Mitchell - an electric blend of rock, Americana, and jazz that reestablishes her not only as a singular vocalist, but as a versatile songwriter and multi-instrumentalist as well. 

In December 2014, Seattle-based London Tone Music released her single Dreamland. It’s a song packed with charm, hope and romance featuring Celia’s dreamy vocal layered on top of guitar, ukulele, keyboards, drums and glockenspiel. It’s a sweet, fun song, but the inspiration for it came from the desire to hold on to the best part of a relationship, even if the romance doesn’t last forever — keeping compliments and kind words like pennies in a jar for an emotionally rainy day — an idea that didn’t dawn on the songwriter until she was consoling another friend about a breakup.

Celia’s London Tone single was released with perfect timing. “I have a triple-EP project coming out this year, and the theme of the song collection has to do with awakening, so having a song called Dreamland is a fitting prelude.” 

Band Members