Ariel Kalma, French New-Age Pioneer, Dies at 78

Ariel Kalma, the pioneering French new-age musician, electronic composer, and multi-instrumentalist, has died. The news was confirmed in a statement from record label Rvng Intl., who throughout the 2010s put out a compilation of Kalma’s previously unreleased early recordings as well as several collaborative albums between himself and other artists. “After contending with many health challenges over the past several years, his departure was sudden though peaceful,” it reads in part. He was 78.

Born in Paris in 1947, Kalma’s first instruments of choice were the recorder and saxophone. At the University of Paris he studied computer science and met the Belgian-Italian crooner Salvatore Adamo. After being invited by Adamo to join his touring band, Kalma learned how to play the flute within a week. During the late ’60s and early ’70s, he met and worked with bossa nova guitarist Baden Powell and, back in Paris, began to play around with ReVox reel-to-reel tape recorders. Chaining two of these machines together, Kalma was able to create analog loops of saxophone, church organ, and other instruments, layering them with poetry and found sound in his first original compositions.

Time spent busking on the streets of New York City led to encounters with both free jazz trumpeter Don Cherry and godfather of American minimalism Terry Riley, but it was a one-way trip to India in 1974 that proved the genesis of Kalma’s recording career proper. He later recalled a “heart-opening” experience of being in an airplane hangar during monsoon season, which he documented on a portable tape recorder. While in India, Kalma also learned the technique of circular breathing, which allowed him to get continuous drones out of his instruments. Returning to Paris, he worked at Pierre Henry’s INA-GRM Studio, frequently cited as the birthplace of modern electronic music, and self-released his debut album, Le Temps des Moissons, in 1975.

Kalma released dozens of albums throughout the rest of the 20th century, and recorded even more music that never saw the light of day. Rvng Intl. gathered some of those early tape recorder compositions on 2014’s An Evolutionary Music (Original Recordings: 1972 – 1979). The latter act of Kalma’s career was largely defined by his collaborations with younger musicians. He worked with Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe (of Lichens and 90 Day Men) on We Know Each Other Somehow in 2015, and last year shared The Closest Thing to Silence alongside the Los Angeles experimental duo Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer. “Ariel was a true maestro,” Aubrey Lowe wrote in memory of Kalma, “a gentle, thoughtful human who maintained a wonder and enthusiasm for creative work throughout his entire life.”