(L-R) Timothy Hill, Seth Markel, Evry Mann, David Hykes and Joel Bluestein

Award-winning composer/singer David Hykes is one of the pioneers in the sacred sounds revival of harmonic chant whose early collaborations paved the way for the world-wide renaissance of interest in “overtone singing” and Tibetan chant. Winner of three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, Hykes founded The Harmonic Choir in 1975, the western world’s oldest and pre-eminent overtone ensemble presenting a fusion of throat singing and chant from a number of sacred traditions. His comprehensive approach to contemplative music developed from his research into Tibetan, Middle Eastern and Mongolian singing forms and from his collaborations with teachers of wisdom and sacred musical art, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the Gyuto and Gyume Monks. Hykes has been credited as the first musician to integrate the throat-singing of Mongolia with the Just Intonation movement of contemporary western music into a comprehensive musical system. Together with guided studies of meditation, mantra and sound yoga, this musical system has allowed the vision of healing harmonic chant as a universal sacred music gradually to unfold.