Biographies
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David Hykes
 Composer and singer, sacred music and meditation retreat leader, writer and long-time spiritual practitioner, David Hykes has been a leading pioneer in the sacred sounds revival worldwide since 1975. The musical and meditative vehicles of his approach --the universal sacred music called Harmonic Chant, and the Harmonic Presence work-- blend spiritual cosmology, music, meditation, sound yoga, and healing harmonization. They are a principal source for the modern overtone chanting and healing sounds movements. His work has been honed, blessed and transformed by direct contact and dialogue with a number of revered traditional teachers. His root guru was Lord Pentland of the Gurdjieff Foundation in New York, Paris, and San Francisco. He also received teachings from "his Teacher's Teacher," Madame Jeanne de Salzmann, who chose his music for her film on her Teacher, the great modern Awakener, G.I. Gurdjieff, "Meetings with Remarkable Men". David Hykes has also had the honor to contribute music to collaborations with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Gyuto and Gyume monks of Tibet, to the feature film "Travelers and Magicians," by revered incarnate lama Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, and to the filmed trilogy "Journey Into Buddhism", visionary Buddhist documentary films by John Bush. He was honored by the support of Lord Yehudi Menuhin , and North Indian raga singer and writer Sheila Dhar . As a prolific film composer , he has also contributed music to the films "Dead Poets Society", "Ghost" and "Baraka", among many others. He has been giving concerts since 1975, and conducting retreats and seminars in many different countries since 1980. He founded The Harmonic Choir in New York in 1975; the group is entering its 32nd season. The modern "harmonic singing," "overtone singing"(both terms he created) and "healing sounds" fields were just some of the doors opened by the first of his 10 CDs, "Hearing Solar Winds," with The Harmonic Choir, the world's best-known vocal overtone CD, released in 1983 and, some 300,000 copies later, now re-mastered and re-released by Signature/Radio France. The 25th anniversary of this legendary recording will be celebrated in 2008. His musical influences and inspirations include teachings and sacred chant traditions from Tibet, Tuva, Mongolia--he was among the first western pioneers of "throat singing", visiting Mongolia in 1981 and collaborating with the Gyuto and Gyume monks in New York in 1985; medieval European chant (he initiated modern harmonic explorations in Western sacred space in 1978, in the Thoronet Abbey); Advaita Vedantin Indian nondual philosophy and his close friend and mentor, the late North Indian raga singer Sheila Dhar; cosmology and astrophysics; the Gurdjieff-de Hartmann music and its source teachings; Just Intonation composer-performer pioneers La Monte Young and Terry Riley whom he met in New York in 1974; master composer Steve Reich; and Sufi music from Persia and Turkey. Hykes was born in Taos, New Mexico, in 1953, where his Taos Pueblo godmother said to him, "we gave you the privilege to sing". He grew up in the Pacific Northwest, attended Antioch College and Columbia University, lived in New York City from 1974-1987> He moved to France in 1987 at the invitation of the French Ministry of Culture, where he maintains a retreat and research center, the French branch of the Harmonic Presence Foundation, in a 12th century Cistercian stone farm-site and park in a forest southwest of Paris. He travels the world giving concerts and retreats dedicated to enlightenment and healing through sound, listening, and meditative awareness practices. He gives concerts and sound meditation events as a solo artist, with The Harmonic Choir, and his other groups, in many countries, festivals, cities, sacred spaces and spiritual communities around the world. He conducts retreats, seminars and workshops in major centers in Europe and America (Esalen, The Breathing Project...), sometimes with breath and consciousness author and teacher Dennis Lewis. David Hykes is the author of numerous private publications, oral teachings, and recordings about meditative spirituality, music and sacred sound. Information about his retreats,workshops, concerts, and teachings is available through www.harmonicpresence.org or by writing an e-mail to harmonicworld@gmail.com. Published articles by David Hykes (besides the extensive texts in the CD booklets) "Pilgrim Movements" in CHEMINS DU RETOUR, Palimpseste Press, France 1990; "HARMONIC CHANT, GLOBAL SACRED MUSIC" in MUSIC, PHYSICIAN FOR TIMES TO COME, Quest Books, 1991, Ed. D. Campbell. "A Search for Awakened Listening" in G.I.GURDJIEFF, published by L'Age d'Homme, Lausanne, 1992 and Continuum Press, USA, 1996, Ed. Jacob Needleman. ALL ALONG THE WAVEFRONT: A Life or Two in the Harmonic Chant David Hykes "I had the idea for founding the Harmonic Choir, in New York in 1975, as a natural outgrowth of ideas and inspirations I hope always to be exploring. For me it's always been about the primordial, ecstatic state, the beginning of things. When there's just light matter, dark matter, energy, silence, stillness, everything in their pure original state. I wanted to bring to life the "cosmological music" feelings and ideas that I felt through sacred and traditional chant in both East and West, as well as in contemporary musicians I have always held in high esteem--LaMonte Young, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and my experimental film idols, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad (also a brilliant musician)... I stopped making films and moved toward music and performance because I felt that the artist should embody, maybe eventually even incarnate, the Idea, and through that incarnated reality, hope to have a much more direct, transformative and helpful effect on the energy of the moment--your state and mine. Now, 32 years later, I certainly feel that is still the rôle of the artist in the spiritual sense, but of course that possibility is based on recognizing that which is already there and present, there is no sense of personal doership, only the possiblity of being an active catalyst-- like a lens, like an ear.... My early interest in Chant (1971) and World Music (1970) was an inspiration for me to do original work, not to be different, but to also find that pure source stream, which if found, inevitably is finding new forms--or in ongoingly pure forms, like Tibetan mantra. "A few key words sum up for me the aim in this work with "harmonic presence". A primordial music. An intense atmosphere, mutual listening. Shared search. The fusion of breath, listening, silence, sound and space. The luminous ground. The resonance and radiance of the harmonics of consciousness...the first note dividing in spectral diffusion, the octave, simultaenous realiies... the Egyptian aphorism, "All the Creation is between 1 and 2." The 7-centered "ladder" of the octave between earth and heaven, head and hara... The equivalence of Number, Note, Harmonic, Frequency and Cycle...all cycles...to knownbthem and go beyond all cycles... How the intensity of sound and silent listening can participate in a luminous transformation of our awareness. Musicians employ an infinity of means to achieve that goal; my own choice was to intensify awareness and actualization of something in the human voice that is universal to all musical sound: the harmonic series, or to express in in a 'unified field,' non-dual way, "the Harmonic." "The harmonic principle is a musical omnipresence, a "given" in the vibrational nature of the cosmos. It's a universal language, a primordial language which is at the same time very personal and person-to-person. "Music is a vibrational ladder with precise harmonic laws governing the ascent and descent of consciousness and matter. "Sound
and silence, breath and space, light and sensation, are all living
matter, and conscious experience of their nature and origins is
enlightening. "
The Harmonic ChoirThe Harmonic Choir is very well-known internationally and has given concerts in some twenty countries since their first concert in 1975. They have participated in many intercultural events, notably in the first-ever joint concerts and symposia in the US. with the Gyuto and Gyume Tibetan monks, and with the Dalai Lama. Recent concerts have included Paris's Cité de la Musique, and the Rubin Museum in New York.
SELECTED PERFORMANCES 1975-2007
Kripalu Center, in Lenox, Massachusetts, Bonmont Abbey, Switzerland, Copenhagen, Anthology Film Archives/New York, Santa Fe, Merkin Hall/NY,The Kitchen/NY, Thoronet Abbey, Santa Fe, Seattle, Berkeley, Zagreb Biennale, Prague Spring, Turin, London, Champeaux, Bratislava...
Cathedral of St.John the Divine in New York (artists-in-residence 1979-87), including the first 2 concerts ever with the Gyuto and Gyume Tibetan monks; Dartmouth College (first-ever joint concerts with the Tuvans); Guggenheim Museum, Carnegie Hall, Merkin Hall, Brooklyn Academy of Music,The Kitchen, University of California, Berkeley, New Music America Festivals, Harmonia Mundi, Newport Beach (with the Dalai-Lama), Boston, Chicago, Hartford,Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Saint Louis, San Antonio, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Seattle, Washington D.C... FRANCE: Le Thoronet Abbey, Champeaux,Théâtre de la Ville de Paris, Avignon Festival, Sénanque Abbey, Royaumont Abbey, Chartreuse of Villeneuve-lez-Avignon, Paray-le-Monial; Festivals: Strasbourg, Lille, Saint-Denis... Concerts: Belfort, Bordeaux, Sèvres,Tarascon, Toulouse,Tours... AUSTRALIA : Adelaide Festival, Sydney,
Brisbane, Newcastle, Perth; AUSTRIA : Graz, Linz, Vienna Festival;
DENMARK : Aarhus, Copenhagen, Odense;CANADA: :Banff, Montréal,
Québec,Toronto, Vancouver;CROATIA : Zagreb Biennale; CZECH
REPUBLIC: Prague Spring Festival; GERMANY: Bonn (with the Gyuto monks),
Bremen, Cologne, Freiburg, Karlsruhe, Passau; ITALY: Ancona, Brescia,
Rimini, Santarcangelo, Polveriggi,Torino;NORWAY : World Music Oslo 90;
SCOTLAND: Glasgow; SLOVAKIA: Bratislava;SWEDEN : Stockholm; ESTONIA :
Tallinn; SPAIN : Tardor Festival 1990, Barcelona, San Sebastian, Madrid,
Canary Islands;SWITZERLAND: La Chaux-de-Fonds, Geneva, Lausanne, Chateau
d'Oex...
The Core Members of The Harmonic Choir
TIMOTHY HILL
is a gifted singer-songwriter, composer and music teacher, who has
worked with David Hykes on and off over the past 30 years, as a singer
and co-composer. He appears on many of The Harmonic Choir's
recordings and soundtracks. He has released several albums of his music
as a singer-songwriter, including "Spirit's Body," "The Human Place" and "This
Bright World." He is the founder and director of the
improvisational vocal ensemble, "Weave," and is based in
Brooklyn, New York. SETH MARKEL joined the Choeur Harmonique in Paris in 1995. He has studied with David Hykes, Marjorie Johnson, and Tim Hill, and before moving to Paris, studied with La Monte Young. STEPHANE GALLET is a senior French player of the ney flute, and is a senior disciple of the Turkish Sufi musician Kudsi Erguner. He also plays plucked and bowed Turkish tanbur. An operatic bass, Stephane has been interested in harmonics for many years and met David Hykes in France in 1980. JOEL BLUESTEIN is the owner of
Dreamland Recording Studio in Woodstock, New York and works as a
producer, guitarist and singer in NYC. He has been a consultant or
producer on a number of recent David Hykes and The Harmonic Choir CDs
and has performed with the ensemble since 1999. ANDREAS
KONVICKA is a leading Swedish lyric baritone, active in opera,
classical and contemporary music fields in Sweden and Europe. He has
performed with the legendary choral conductor Erik Erikson in his
ensemble and with The Swedish Radio Choir. Andreas also has an
background as music producer at the Swedish Broadcasting Company, and is
a licensed therapist and music therapist. He has sung and studied with
David Hykes since 2001 and has performed with The Harmonic Choir in New
York, Copenhagen, Geneva and Cologne. EVRY MANN, percussionist, composer and writer, is active internationally in new music and music education. He has toured extensively with Harmonic Antenna and the Harmonic Choir throughout the US. Ev has an M.A. in Music Composition from Mills college, and has accompanied leading artists including Terry Riley and the late Don Cherry. Ev's percussion is featured on the CD "RAINBOW DANCES" and the recent HARMONIC WORLDS. He is Founder and Director of the Marbletown Multo-Arts Center in Stone Ridge, New York.
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