| David Hykes |
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David Hykes is a composer, singer, teacher of contemplative music and meditation, and visual artist. He directs the Harmonic Presence Foundation which since 1981 has explored resonant relationships between mind, music, and the medicine of healing harmonization. He was the first westerner to study and collaborate with musician-practitioners from Tibet, Tuva, and Mongolia, giving concerts for H.H. the Dalai Lama and Rangjung Yeshe Institute, and with the Gyuto and Gyume Monks. In 1975 he founded Harmonic Chant, an approach to "the music of the spheres" based on the harmonic series, as found in all music, and throughout the universe since the Big Bang (as the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB). His main Tibetan Buddhist teachers are Tsoknyi Rinpoché, Chokyi Nyima Rinpoché and Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoché. He was a pupil of the Gurdjieff work for 20 years, studying under Lord Pentland and Dr. Michel de Salzmann. His music guru was the late North Indian raga singer, Smt. Sheila Dhar. He is a noted “sacred cinema” composer (Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s "Travellers and Magicians; John Bush’s "Journey into Buddhism"; "Baraka;" Peter Brook’s "Meetings with Remarkable Men”). His visual art work presently is the ongoing Harmonic Visions series, in which his voice creates stunning visual mandalas and evocative imagery, using the Harmonic Vision software program he developed, which translates sonic harmonics into corresponding visual patterns. Hykes's work has been honored by UNESCO, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Edwards Art Fund, the Threshold Foundation and the Flying Elephants Foundation. He has released 12 albums, several with his pioneering group The Harmonic Choir, including "Hearing Solar Winds," the best-selling "throat-singing" album of all time. The Foundation maintains a research and retreat center in France. Hykes gives concerts, seminars, and master classes, and leads contemplative music & meditation retreats in countries around the world. For information, please visit www.harmonicpresence.org |