Ariel Kalma

Biography

Kalma was born in Paris and learned to play recorder and saxophone as a youth. He studied computer science in college, and while at university he met Salvatore Adamo, who soon hired Kalma into his touring band on a world tour as a saxophonist and flautist. While on the road with Adamo, he met Baden Powell, with whom he would collaborate in France and Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Around this time, he made experimental tape pieces using his own recorded instruments, found sounds, church organs, and poetry.

In 1974 he took a one way plane to in India, learning rudimentary classical Indian music and developing an interest in meditative and drone music. He was also influenced by American minimalist music. In 1975, he recorded and self-released an album, Le Temps des Moissons while working at the GRM studio of INA Pierre Henry in Paris. His 1978 album Osmose features Borneo rainforest nature sounds recorded by Richard Tinti.

Kalma's output increased over the 1980s and 1990s, and his discography now runs to several dozen albums. In 2014, his 1970s work was collected by RVNG and a compilation, An Evolutionary Music, was released. This album reached #9 on the Billboard New Age albums chart in 2015.

Albums