Iasos

Iasos (born 9 January 1947, died 6 January 2024), was a Greek-born American new age musician who was based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. He is one of the earliest creators of the "new age" genre.

Born in Alexandroupolis, Greece as Joseph Benardouth (the family soon shortened the surname to Benardot) his family moved to New York, United States when he was four. Studying piano at 8 and the flute at 10, his formal music education lasted until the end of high-school, after which he became self-taught. In 1967 he stated he began spontaneously "hearing" a new type of music in his mind and after graduating from Cornell University in cultural anthropology in 1968, he moved to Sausalito, California in order to start working on the music that he would internally "hear", which he then referred to as "paradise music". After appearing credited for instrumentation on albums in the early 70s he released his first album [m=168841] in 1975 and in that same year he would also feature playing the electric flute on the first albums of friend and fellow new age musician Steven Halpern.

He stated that he adopted the artist name Iasos (pronounced ya-sos) after experiencing a flashback from a past life in ancient Greece while walking down the street. Ἴασος (Iasos) was also the name of a Greek city in ancient Caria. It was originally on an island, but is now connected to the mainland of southwestern Türkiye.

In his later years he moved to Maui, Hawaii.