Chris Dingman

NYC-based vibraphonist and composer Chris Dingman is known for his distinctive approach to the instrument: sonically rich and expansive. In his captivating solo performances, he casts an enveloping atmosphere, creating layers of simultaneous sound – soaring melodies, swirling textures, and undulating pedal tones. It’s an immersive listening experience that many have described as transportive and deeply healing.

In his solo work, Chris is exploring the intersections of meditation, trance, and healing, through music improvisation. Chris has performed with legendary artists Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, and many of today’s jazz, creative, and world music luminaries. He brings together this background with a host of influences from around the world, including his studies of the mbira music of Zimbabwe, in service of taking listeners on a journey to a transcendent place.

Working in NYC since 2002, Chris documented his solo improvisations privately for many years. His trajectory was forever changed when, in 2018, his father entered hospice. Chris played and recorded gentle, meditative music as an act of care for him in his final months of life. This music became the 5-hour extended album Peace, ultimately released in 2020.  This led to an ongoing evolution of his solo music and his critically acclaimed albums journeys vol. 1 and vol. 2 , each born from an audience-supported recording series, and which The New York Times described as “hypnotizing” and Jazz at Lincoln Center called “absolutely beautiful.”

Chris has brought his special brand of healing music far and wide, from concert venues throughout the US, to retreat centers, meditation, mediumship, and sound healing events, to medical conferences, churches, hospitals, and hospice centers. Recent events have taken place at Omega Institute (Rhinebeck), The Rubin Museum of Art (NYC), UC San Diego, Philosophical Research Society (Los Angeles), Timucua Arts (Orlando), The Alembic (Berkeley), Tibet House (NYC), One Longfellow Square (Portland, ME), Constellation (Chicago), Lawrence University (Appleton), and many others.

In the medical field, he has presented talks and performances at the Gold Foundation Conference on Humanism in Medicine, the American College of Physicians Southern CA chapter, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (NYC), Orlando Health, and written for the Johns Hopkins Medicine blog.

photo by Zachary Maxwell Stertz

Photo by Filip Wolak, from a Psychedelic Sangha Bardo Bath at The Rubin Museum of Art in NYC

Chris was commissioned to conceive and lead the twice-monthly series Transformations in partnership with connect.faith, finding creative new ways to hold space for healing through music. In these meditative and creative sessions on Zoom, Chris gives participants the option to set intentions, and to share issues and hardships they’re facing, and he channels this into the music. This exchange has proven to be very meaningful, leading participants to describe the experience as “immediately energizing and healing on a physical, emotional and spiritual level.” Transformations currently offers general sessions twice a month and will soon be starting a weekly series for grief and loss. 
More info at transformationsmusic.com and connect.faith/transformations.

Since 2022, Chris has become a close collaborator with the NYC-based Psychedelic Sangha. In the group’s “Bardo Bath” events, co-founder Doc Kelley leads a Tibetan-inspired death meditation into and out of Chris’s 60+ minute channeled soundscape, accompanied by art films by Yosuh Jones, Aubrey Nehring, and others. With anywhere from 30 to 150 people, all lying down or in meditative postures, these events are held at venues such as Tibet House (NYC), The Alembic (Berkeley), Sparrow Funeral Home (Brooklyn), Weylin (Brooklyn), and many others. The Sangha now calls Chris its “sonic shaman,” coming out of the moving and spiritual nature of these events.