The prestigious music industry magazine, Keyboard, proclaimed Steven "the first and definitive New Age keyboard artist." John Bradshaw features Steven's music prominently in his workshops and PBS-TV series, as does best-selling author Dannion Brinkley (Saved By The Light).

Steven has devoted himself to studying, researching, and creating music with a universal appeal that makes a positive contribution to personal and planetary transformation. His music is used throughout the world in homes, hospitals, corporate offices, and schools, and is the "music of choice" for working at one's personal computer.

Interviewing Steven was a delight. He is direct, literate, and he keeps his ego right where he wants it—in service to the music. Steven approaches his profession more like a craftsman than a "superstar." During my conversation I felt as if I were speaking with a therapist or a teacher, not a recording artist. I think, down deep, Steven sees himself, first and foremost, as a teacher. His wisdom is expressed in words and music: "If we're ever to have peace on our planet, we must experience peace with ourselves first."
From OPEN EXCHANGE MAGAZINE, July-August 1996.—Bart Brodsky

Bart Brodsky: I read and was fascinated by your biography and the impact you've had in what has come to be known as "new age music." Your background is in both music and psychology, but what inspired you to create the kind of music you create?

Steven Halpern: Personal need and life mission. In other words, I learned early in my life that sound and music was of significant importance, more so than just as a hobby, but it wasn't until I started reading... My first insights were through some readings about Edgar Cayce in the mid to late 1960's, the concept of using sound as a healing art, as a true spiritual tool and resource, that the proverbial light went on in my head and I said, "Yes! That's what I want to do."

BB: What were you doing at the time?

SH: I was a student at the University of Buffalo under an assumed major, liberal arts—pre-dentistry, because I knew a dentist who worked four days a week and played three days a week. I learned very quickly that I was not cut out to be a dentist, just from the challenges of organic chemistry and physics. And it wasn't until one of my philosophy professors, even before Joseph Campbell, said, "What do you have a passion for? If you were to follow your heart, what would you do?" And it was at that time I was coming into contact with some of the more esoteric writings about the secret influence of music, the secret powers of music. And that was the first time anything had grabbed me. Unfortunately, there was not a body of information you could go to, as you can now at music or book stores, that talked about the healing powers of music.

BB: For a young music student in the 60s, one would think that the natural impetus would be to be pushed toward rock or toward classical. And yet, you were really at the genesis of a brand new genre. How did that happen?

SH: It evolved, as many things in the New Age did, out of rock music. We were in Buffalo, walking with high energy jazz, which was my primary persona. I was on trumpet, and also guitar. My influences were Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, who would put on magical performances using sound as mantra, the kind of things that later on the Grateful Dead would do. Recreating a mythic context using sound, not so much for healing, but certainly for the evocation of very powerful brain states and states of consciousness. Playing some of that music, both the high energy jazz and jazz rock created an opportunity: It was the first time I went on automatic, where the instrument started "playing itself."

BB: Please talk more about what's come to be known, for want of a better term, as "new age" music, and your contribution to it. After all, you are widely credited as a modern founder of new age music and its first "superstar." Before record stores knew there was a market or would agree to carry it, you popularized this kind of music by selling it at fairs, concerts, and by direct mail.

SH: The field that I helped create has become a catchall umbrella for any kind of music that was nonvocal and other than rap, disco, heavy metal, or classical. Unfortunately, that's meant that a lot of music that shouldn't ever have been called "new age" became called "new age," and that's caused a lot of confusion. At the very worst, there are two main genres, authentic new age music, which is more meditative and healing, with a spiritual intent, a musical analog to the Celestine Prophecy. This is in contrast to the music that Yani or John Tesh play, which is contemporary instrumental music by their own admissions, but which keeps getting placed by stores and by Billboard magazine, calling it "new age" and confusing everybody and making it very difficult for the musicians interested in creating healing or uplifting music. Music with a beat or which sounds like pop music always takes precedence over music that's more subtle. And it's a great challenge and frustration. I just got elected as one of the national chairpersons of a group, grammys for the independents, the national association of independent Record Distributors. We're really working to educate people to the fact that all new age music is not created alike. It's not saying something bad about this music, but it's inappropriate if you try to use it for relaxation.

BB: I think I know what you mean. Your music is not overtly like East Indian music or Gregorian chants, but there's a certain spiritual aspect...

SH: Right. It's more similar to that than it is to Yani and John Tesh.

BB: ...even though it might not seem as similar on the surface.

SH: My first album jackets traced my conceptual lineage precisely to those two aspects, and further back to ancient Greece and ancient China and Pythagoras, and perhaps back to Atlantis. That's the tradition that the New Age music really built upon, the ancient shamanic healing traditions.

BB: The basis of your music is inspirational. But you've participated in double-blind studies which show that your music produces relaxation, even in people who don't particularly like the music. That's fascinating! How do you go about creating that kind of music? How does it happen in your mind? Is it something that comes out full-blown as a result of inspiration, or is there a bit of a scientist in you that does it?

SH: It's a little of all those things. When the music started coming through, in other words, when I opened the channels and cleared out the circuits, as it were, both with a lot of practice and playing the high energy music, I started getting to a place in my own life where I was meditating, and in a state of meditation I started hearing music. Switching to piano, which was an instrument I could play while still meditating, this kind of music started coming through. And it wasn't until other people started telling me the kind of experiences they were having with it that John Lilly and Stan Krippner told me, "you need to move beyond the subjective response of hearsay and do some scientific research to prove the objective physiological responses."

BB: And your music has proven even more relaxing than classical music because you set out intentionally to create relaxing music.

SH: Precisely. Both intention and the form itself. Most classical music has built into it a degree of tension and resolution. It comes with the territory. I said, based on ancient traditional Indian raga music, the first Persians, and shamanic traditions from around the world, let us not deal with the tension, let us just go from a place of peace, and then coming from a place of peace, we can evoke and resonate a place of peace in the listener. Then, combining the quality of music with that intent, purpose in the music, that's why so many people say, "I experience feelings of inner peace, and a great lightness of being, and bliss." John Bradshaw pointed out that music like this is really music of being. So often we are human "doings" as opposed to human "beings."

BB: You anticipated my next question. I was about to mention that at a recent John Bradshaw event that we produced, he made a point to play some of your music. And he incorporated it with meditation, which was quite different from the content of much of the rest of his work where he was leading people to a conceptual understanding. With your music he was leading them to experience the resolution, the peace.

SH: Exactly. And that is why Bradshaw's work is so strong. Because he combines both aspects. So many people will work just on one side or the other. And the key seems to be balance, getting input and experience in all aspects.

BB: You've composed several albums with various themes, for example, creativity, inner child work, and creating love. How do you set your mind or your heart to creating particular music on a particular theme?

SH: Certain of them are self-engendered. The music comes first, and I don't try to direct it. When I'm in the studio I make an appointment with my guides and my band—most people can't see them but I've been working with them all my life—and I don't place a limit on what's going to happen. I go to the place where I can hear the music, the music flows, and then we'll work with that as a context. That's what happened with Spectrum Suite and Crystal Suite and Eastern Peace. Now, with something like Lullaby Suite, the music for John Bradshaw, I had been playing at the workshops. I saw how the music uplifted and inspired and touched people's hearts based on traditional lullabies, lullabies with a great deal of space and silence and being-ness opportunity in them. So it was a matter of just going to the studio and tuning into that place. It was that simple.

BB: Inspiration is often a very private sort of concept, but many people speak of higher powers and guides. Is there any similar insight that you've received that might attribute to the phenomenal success of your music?

SH: My guides have traditionally suggested to me that we downplay that aspect and just let the music speak for itself. The music will resonate at a universal frequency that opens the heart and people will know when they hear it, without being seduced by "hype," as it were. My last major album, Gifts of the Angels, at a time now when the culture is more accepting of angels and [that type of] inspiration, has led me to come out about it. If you go back to my last 20 years of recordings, here's what was happening during that time that I couldn't say beforehand, but in each case, there were key moments when the studio would fill up with light and sometimes even my recording engineers would say, "Wow! What just happened?" But these are the kinds of things you couldn't talk about 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. In fact, in many circles you still can't.

BB: But your music reaches a crossover audience, too.

SH: Precisely. We have Baptists, Mormons, all religious persuasions, certainly all races. And the music is in use and listened to around the world in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, Australia and Japan, as well as across Europe and the United States. It's amazing...

BB: So you're tapping into a universal need for peace and resolution, enlightenment or harmony in one's life.

SH: I certainly believe so.

BB: Now, on Thursday, August 8, OPEN EXCHANGE is sponsoring a workshop, "A Healing Evening With Steven Halpern." And you're going to be talking about some of these concepts as well as demonstrating some of them. Can you give people a bit of a glimpse... How can you teach how to produce healing music or to use it in the healing process? Is this something that can be taught?

SH: Definitely. The first point is self-awareness and the second one is taking responsibility. So, in other words, I assist participants in experiencing how sound and music affects them. We look at how it affects their heartbeat, breath, most dramatically. And we will use a little muscle testing to particularize that for individuals. And we will go into some meditations and guided visualizations, deep alpha level brainwave listening states, where you can get deeper into the music than ordinarily is the case. We'll show you how to do this at home, because it's so simple, once you know how to do it.

BB: I just talked to two bodywork therapists who were signing up for this evening because they wanted to learn how to incorporate this kind of music in their own healing process. Can you describe how talk therapists, somatic therapists, and others can use music in their practices similar to how Bradshaw and others do?

SH: Certainly. To enhance rapport, certain kinds of music will assist both the practitioner and the client in breathing together and, literally, tuning in to each other. Certain kinds of music makes that more accessible because it evokes the relaxation response in both. Sometimes I see well meaning practitioners choose erroneous music that they may like, that puts their client on edge and adds tension and undermines the therapeutic treatment.

BB: Not necessarily bad music, but simply music that may be inappropriate for the setting, right?

SH: You got it. And because we've had no training in that, both in school or from the music industry, people don't know the simplest thing to look for. There's an article in the paper that says, "Mozart makes you smarter." Well, the reality is, "not for everybody." Mozart made me dumber, because I was paying attention to the music, rather than what I was studying! That's the other thing, Bart, that got me into this whole field. I was reading books that said classical music is the best thing to use to study and write with, and it wasn't working. It's like I was gaining weight on a weight loss diet.

BB: That's interesting. I like to listen to different kinds of music in background when I'm working, but friends of mine say that they can't put any music on without being distracted. Does that seem to indicate that maybe some of us are wired a little differently?

SH: Unquestionably. And so many of the books and articles that have been out there are written about people who don't know what they're talking about. Just like diet and nutrition, you have to fine tune it to the individual. What my workshop will do is empower the individual to find out more what works for them, so they don't have to take my word or your word, or Yani's word, or someone else. They can find out what works best for them. And they'll be astounded what kind of a positive contribution it makes in their life.

BB: Is there anything else you'd like to say to our readers before we close?

SH: I invite your readers to close their eyes, and take a deep breath, and listen to some of this music with headphones, and they'll get a sense of how much more there is to this quality of music using the subtle dimensions of sound.

BB: Do you have any advice for aspiring young musicians who want to follow in your path?

SH: All of this information is essential for any musician who is interested in working in the healing context of sound. The Prime Directive is: Healer, heal thyself. Musician, compose thyself.

BB: Steven, I want to thank you very much for the time you've spent with us today. We all look forward to seeing you on August 8.

SH: Thank you. I've enjoyed it!