Welcome! Please also visit David Hykes's main page on MySpace and the David Hykes/Harmonic Presence Foundation website. You can e-mail us with any questions about concerts, David's Harmonic Presence teachings and seminars, and CD orders...
Bonjour! Veuillez voir le site principal de David Hykes sur MySpace et aussi le site sur les activités en France de David Hykes , à Pommereau, son centre principal.
Composer, singer, and meditation teacher David Hykes (b. Taos, New Mexico, 1953) began developing the universal sacred music he calls Harmonic Chant in New York in 1975, the year he founded his first music group, the western world's pre-eminent overtone ensemble, David Hykes and The Harmonic Choir. His immediate inspirations included the search for group spiritual community as exemplified in the Gurdjieff work and Buddhist sangha; sacred music from the Cathedrals and Temples of polyphonic Europe; Tibet, India and Mongolia; and the contemporary harmonic explorations of composer-performers La Monte Young, Terry Riley and Steve Reich.
The origins of Harmonic Chant-- like those of all earthling music-- can be found in the natural harmonic resonances found throughout the cosmos since the big bang; those harmonic resonances, called the Cosmic Microwave Background, continue to echo to this day. Other examples of harmonic resonance at a cosmolgocial level in nature include the oscillations found inside stars (the subject of helioseismology); but of course it is through the resonances of harmonic presence in our own earthling chords of Being --the vibrations of heart, mind, and body-- where David's music rings most true.In his own quest to understand where such music comes from, David's godmother from the Taos Pueblo, Lucy, told him, "we gave you the privilege to sing." His root guru, Lord Pentland, head of the Gurdjieff Work in the USA, told him after receiving David's first recording in the intensive care unit, "I feel better," and took him to Paris to meet the lineage holders of the Gurdjieff work-- Mme. de Salzmann, Dr. Michel de Salzmann, et M. Henri Tracol, leading to David's first sacred cinema music composition, for "Meetings with Remarkable Men," by Peter Brook. Then the amazing Thuksey Rinpoché gave him teachings about harmonics of the breath and he had the honor of a series of collaborations in the US and Europe with the Gyuto and Gyume Monks and His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Harmonia Munci conference, California, 1989). In 1982 he began work with his principal music guru, Smt. Sheila Dhar, a wonderful North Indian raga singer. Such beings gave him hope. With these and other deep influences, he had the encouragement he needed to develop and share, these 32 years, a new universal sacred music, Harmonic Chant.
This 2007-2008 season marks the 25th anniversary of Hykes's unanimously heralded album with The Harmonic Choir, "Hearing Solar Winds" , now on the Signature/Radio France label. "Hearing Solar Winds" launched the modern vocal harmonic and healing sounds movements. We believe both that it's totally original and that, in spite of numberless imitations, it remains totally unique.
"Hearing Solar Winds" has sold some 300,000 copies and is still selling...
David's discography with The Harmonic Choir and his other groups now includes 11 albums.
He most often gives concerts now as a solo artist with an accompanying ensemble of gifted instrumentalists, such as percussion genius Bruno Caillat and sufi (ney) flute player Stéphane Gallet, both from France.
David recently released "Harmonic Worlds," a suite of 7 compositions for The Harmonic Choir, based on 7 of his favorite Harmonic Modes from the Mandala of the 32 Harmonic Modes.
The group's gifted core members over the years have included Timothy Hill, Seth Markel, Joel Bluestein, Stèphane Gallet, and percussionists Ev Mann and Bruno Caillat, as well as other talented musicians including Tuvan music specialist and author Thedore Levin, Hollyowood film composer Carter Burwell, and raga singer Marjorie Johnson, to name a few.
"Harmonic Worlds" is available here:
along with David's other CDs, including "Breath of the Heart" and "Rainbow Dances. Please e-mail us with questions about ordering any of the CDs.
David's received awards as a composer by the National Endowment of the Arts (3 times), the Rockefeller Foundation, the Threshold Foundation, and in 2005 received a major Fellowship from the Flying Elephants Foundation for his 30 years of work developing a universal sacred music of our time.He divides his time between the US and France, where he and the Harmonic Presence Foundation maintain an international music, meditation and spiritual retreat center in a 12th century Cistercian site, in a forest near Paris. For more information, visit www.harmonicpresence.org
