Utilising non-Western scales, non-traditional chords and rhythmless songs, Halpern pioneered the technique of creating non-anticipatory music – that is, music where the listener has no idea where the song is going, thus avoiding the inherent predictive anxiety listeners experience with standard pop: “Here comes the chorus.” His first major LP, Spectrum Suite (a modified version of his debut Christening For Listening, which contained the crate-digger classic “Something For Every Body Suite”), offering listeners a color-coded chart for balancing each of the body’s chakras. After noticing profoundly medicinal results from his particular strain of non-structured, spacey Fender Rhodes playing, Halpern began shopping his music around on the burgeoning metaphysical conference circuit. He attended graduate school at the University of Buffalo (where he audited classes with jazz bassist Ron Carter and drummer Joe Chambers on the side) to explore the connections between music, consciousness and healing by employing the sophisticated new technologies of brainwave biofeedback and Kirlian aura photography. Having begun his musical career as a classically trained jazz-rock trumpeter, playing with the Bay Area psych-fusionists The Fourth Way, Halpern became dissatisfied with performance-oriented modern music in the early 70s and began to experiment in the ancient traditions of using sound as mind-expanding medicine. Excluding Yanni (who doesn’t count due to overwhelming garishness), Halpern is the de facto iconic figure of new age. He has recorded inside the Great Pyramid, written books on aligning chakras with sound, been sampled for 1990s rave bangers and been profiled on CBS’s 48 Hours. As one of the first musicians recording under the ‘new age’ tag (along with Iasos, who we also interviewed here), the New York-bred, Marin County-based Halpern has released no less than 70 recordings and sold six million combined albums throughout his four-decade career – spanning from sleep-aid tools, to massage therapy soundtracks, to cosmic synth ambiance, to subliminal affirmations intended to heal prostates.
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