ALBUM REVIEWS
PILGRIMAGE TO THE ANDES
"Their music is some of the most beautiful and compelling the world has to offer"
CLASSIC CD MAGAZINE - CHRISTMAS 1999
" Fabulous use of delicious melodies set to a gamut of attractive Andean traditional popular dance rhythms, with beautiful violin teamed with gorgeous sounds from panpipes, charango, bamboo quena flutes and bass. There are echoes of the folk integrity of fellow Chileans Inti Illimani and somewhere, partly through the honesty and integrity of it all, one feels the passionate legacy of Victor Jara."
FOLK ROOTS MAGAZINE - MARCH 2000
" An Andean Christmas allows their calm contemplative sound to create an aura of human grace"
TOWER RECORDS TOP MAGAZINE - MARCH 2000
MAR ADENTRO
" Getting off to a cracking start with Cuban Nico Saquito's Amarrao con 'P' (Bewitched By You), Quimantu's characteristic singing style is the rounded, intimate voice of the Southern Cone rather than the more nasal Caribbean. That tender voice is heard continually, specifically on the title track Mar Adentro (Open Sea) and the beautiful love song, In Peace (En Son de Paz), with Rachel Pantin superbly interjecting melody on the violin), both songs composed and sung by musical director Mauricio Venegas."
FOLK ROOTS MAGAZINE
CAMINO AL SOL
" These musicians well-known for their film scores The Mission, for one and collaborations with European Classical players, are unafraid to use these experiences to inform their approach to their own traditions. This is not an unseemly scramble after a money-making fusion or even "Real World" styled milky coffee blend but the sound of intelligent musicians in an international sound-world."
VENUE MAGAZINE
" Quimantu don't just rejuvenate the same repertoire, they move forward with the Andean music which is their idiom. They've the film music of The Mission, Priest and The Honorary Consul to their credits as well as work with John Williams. As it is they play with great delicacy, emotion, sensitivity and longing on the intimate pieces and fire up energy in the dances. Quimantu do present themselves as they are: musicians able to be in many places, professionally competent at many musics."
FOLK ROOTS MAGAZINE
" Excellent blend of those familiar Andean pan-pipes, ten stringed guitars, armadillo skin drums and some beautiful, folky tunes. Its surprising how many twists can be wrung out of these instruments."
TIME OUT MAGAZINE