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Iasos (born Joseph Benardouth on January 9, 1947, in Alexandroupolis, Greece; died January 6, 2024) was a Greek-born American new age musician based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is recognized as one of the earliest creators of the "new age" genre. At the age of four, his family moved to New York City, where he began studying piano at eight and flute at ten. His formal music education concluded at the end of high school, after which he became self-taught. In 1967, he began to "hear" a new type of music in his mind, and after graduating from Cornell University with a degree in cultural anthropology in 1968, he relocated to Sausalito, California, to develop the music he envisioned, which he termed "paradise music." He released his first album in 1975 and contributed instrumentation to early albums of fellow new age musicians. Iasos adopted his artist name after experiencing a flashback from a past life in ancient Greece. The name Ἴασος (Iasos) also refers to an ancient Greek city in Caria, which is now connected to the mainland of southwestern Türkiye. In his later years, he moved to Maui, Hawaii.
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