TONY KHALIFE
Musician · Composer · Vocalist · Multi-Instrumentalist · Healing Arts Practitioner
“ I am the sand with drifting ears. I carry the dance of Eastern winds, fashioning melodies of peace. I am the rose with broken tears.”
Artist Statement
Tony Khalife is a Lebanese-born musician, composer, and healing arts practitioner whose life and work stand at the crossroads of sacred tradition, contemporary artistry, and the emerging science of sound as medicine. For five decades, he has explored the transformative power of music and vibration through lived, embodied practice. Today, he is forging transdisciplinary collaborations with researchers, universities, and institutions to deepen the evidence base for music as a healing modality and to bring this work to communities across the globe.
Performance and Artistic Highlights
Tony has performed at the Kennedy Center (Arabesque Festival, 2009), Krannert Center (Wellness Gathering, 2021), Bali Spirit Festival (2008), and numerous venues across California and internationally. He has composed for theater and film, earning a Drammy Award (Portland Drama Critics Circle Award) for Best Music for a Play for Country of Origin (1999), and collaborated with poet Elmaz Abinader on a United States Cultural Exchange tour of Egypt.
His recordings—Pandhari (1989), Fish Out of Sea (1998), The Music Shelter (2005), Transcendence (2007), Book of Changes (2012), and The Farther Shore of Light: Sanskrit Songs of Devotion (2014)—are sonic journeys. Each offers listeners a space for contemplation, healing, and transformation.
Teaching, Facilitation, and Healing Practice
As an educator, Tony has taught guitar, tabla, vocal expression, and sacred music throughout California. He served on the faculty at Esalen Institute, as Steward and Nada Brahma Facilitator at the Ojai Eco Sanctuary for fifteen years, and as Musical Director of the Dance of Oneness for over a decade, and recently the music director of the Ubiquity University Chartres Academy.
His workshops combine conscious breathing, mantra, harmonium, guitar, meditation, and participatory chanting, inviting people of all backgrounds into an accessible experience of sound, resonance, and mindful awareness. Participants simply enter the shared field of breath, vibration, and collective voice.
Tony has assisted in over one thousand healing retreats, guiding participants through vocal activation, rhythmic entrainment, and vibrational resonance. His practice rests on a conviction: sound is felt, embodied, and transformative. It is a medicine that works through the body, the nervous system, and the soul.
Mission
From the ruins of war to a lifetime dedicated to peace, Tony's journey carries a single truth: music heals. His mission remains unchanged—to cultivate harmony within individuals and communities by sharing music as a living practice of compassion, resilience, and conscious awakening.
Biography
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Tony Khalife was a child of war. At eleven years old, the Lebanese Civil War shattered his childhood. Drafted into a local militia, he witnessed violence beyond imagining. In hiding, sheltering from gunfire with his family in an underground room, he picked up a guitar for the first time. Alone in the dark, he taught himself to play, discovering that music could offer something war could not take: hope. Music became his survival. Sound became his language. Vibration became his prayer.
By 1982, Tony was named Best Guitarist in Lebanon. He moved to Los Angeles to study at the Guitar Institute of Technology, graduating with honors in 1986, and performed alongside world-renowned artists including Al DiMeola at the Guitar Institute of Technology. Technical mastery proved insufficient. He was searching for something deeper—the ability of sound to comfort, unite, and transform. That search led him to India, where he became a disciple of Satguru Sant Keshavadas, immersing himself in Sanskrit chanting, Vedic ritual, and devotional music. He served seven years as a Pujari at Wishwa Shanti Ashrama in Oakland while studying tabla under the legendary Ustad Zakir Hussain.
For more than five decades, Tony has integrated Eastern and Western musical traditions—Indian ragas, sacred Sanskrit mantra, Sufi devotional influences, jazz harmony, and contemporary songwriting—into a distinctive approach that blends sound, breath, and presence. His work is performance as facilitation. He holds space for others to find their way back to themselves.
Current Work and Vision
Tony is entering a pivotal new chapter. Based in Garberville, California, he serves as Musical Director of the Ubiquity University Chartres Academy, leading sacred music and ceremony at Chartres Cathedral (2025-2026), and as a faculty member at the Esalen Institute. He is also developing a comprehensive teaching archive to document his fifty-year vibrational healing methodology—a body of work that has supported thousands of individuals and communities seeking connection, resilience, and peace.
Looking ahead, Tony is building relationships with researchers, universities, and institutions to explore the evidence base for music as a healing modality and to examine new frontiers in the study of sound, consciousness, and human well-being. His vision bridges art and science, ancient wisdom and contemporary inquiry, toward a more compassionate and resonant world.
option b Tony is entering a pivotal new chapter. Based in Garberville, California, he serves as Musical Director of the Ubiquity University Chartres Academy, leading sacred music and ceremony at Chartres Cathedral (2025-2026). He is also developing a comprehensive teaching archive to document his decades long vibrational healing methodology—a body of work that has supported thousands of individuals and communities seeking connection, resilience, and peace.
Looking ahead, Tony is expanding his practice through rigorous, cross-sector partnerships. He is actively engaging with researchers, universities, and institutions to deepen the evidence base for music as a healing modality and to explore new frontiers in the study of sound, consciousness, and human well-being. His vision bridges art and science, ancient wisdom and contemporary inquiry, toward a more compassionate and resonant world.