David Hykes is a composer, singer, musician, recording artist, visual artist, and teacher whose work bridges contemplative music, meditation, and healing. He is the creator of Harmonic Chant and the Harmonic Presence practice, an approach that brings together music, meditation training, and harmonizing healing methods. A pioneer in new music, contemplative chant, and healing sound, he founded Harmonic Chant in New York in 1975, the same year he launched The Harmonic Choir, widely regarded as one of the world’s leading overtone ensembles.
To date, he has released 12 albums, including Hearing Solar Winds, one of the best-selling overtone albums of all time. His recordings offer subtle, original explorations of Harmonic Chant, mantra, Sufi poetry, and poetic texts, accompanied by instruments such as wind harp, Sufi nêy flute, tabla, zarb percussion, and even the monumental bell of Boudhanath in Nepal.
For ten years, David Hykes served as Artist-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. He later moved to France, where he has been based since 1987. Since 1980, he has led Harmonic Presence retreats around the world. His work connecting music, meditation, mind, and healing has been presented at the Dalai Lama’s Mind and Life Institute and recognized with awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, UNESCO, the Edwards Foundation Arts Fund, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.
His “sacred cinema” film music includes contributions to Baraka, The Tree of Life, and many other films. At the invitation of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, he also contributed music to the feature film Travellers and Magicians. As a visual artist and filmmaker, he now develops Harmonic Visions, a body of work that transforms chanted sound into light and imagery, reflecting the unity of vibration and visual form.
Since 1981, he has guided the Harmonic Presence Foundation. In addition to his role in avant-garde music in the United States, he was the first contemporary Westerner to study and collaborate with musicians from Tibet, Tuva, and Mongolia. He has given concerts in New York and with the Gyuto and Gyume Monks, and over the years has presented Harmonic Chant in support of the Dharma in Nepal, as well as in events with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in France, the United States, and Canada. He was also a close student and friend of the late Smt. Sheila Dhar, a renowned North Indian raga singer and author.
David Hykes has been a Dharma student for many years. He took refuge with Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, who gave him the name Shenpen Yeshe, meaning “Serving the Primordial Wisdom that brings happiness to beings.” He studies with Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche and Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and continues to attend teachings whenever possible. Earlier in life, he completed nearly twenty years of spiritual study in the Gurdjieff Foundations in New York, San Francisco, and Paris, as a student of Lord John Pentland and Dr. Michel de Salzmann.
Today, he divides his time between France, where he directs Pommereau, a music and meditation center near Paris, and the USA, where he teaches, performs, and lectures on behalf of the Harmonic Presence Foundation, the first modern organization dedicated to contemplative tradition and the music of harmonic body, mind, and heart.