In 1969,
Frank Zappa composed the music for Ponty's solo album
King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa (World Pacific, 1970). In 1972,
Elton John invited Ponty to contribute to his
Honky Chateau (1972) album. At the urging of Zappa and
The Mothers of Invention, who wanted him to join their tour, Ponty emigrated with his wife and two young daughters to the United States and made his home in
Los Angeles. He continued to work on a variety of projects – including two of
John McLaughlin's
Mahavishnu Orchestra albums
Apocalypse (1974) and
Visions of the Emerald Beyond (1975) and tours until 1975, when he signed with
Atlantic. For the next decade, Ponty toured the world repeatedly and recorded 12 consecutive albums, each of which reached the
Billboard jazz charts top five, selling millions of albums. His early Atlantic recordings, such as 1976's
Aurora and
Imaginary Voyage, established Ponty as one of the leading figures in jazz-rock. He went on to crack the Top 40 with the album
Enigmatic Ocean in 1977 and
Cosmic Messenger in 1978. In 1984, a video of
time-lapse images of New York City and Chicago was produced by Louis Schwarzberg for the song "
Individual Choice" (1983). Besides recording and touring with his own group, Ponty performed with the
Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Radio City Orchestra in New York, and symphony orchestras in Montreal, Toronto, Oklahoma City, and Tokyo. In the late 1980s he recorded the albums
The Gift of Time (1987) and
Storytelling (1989) for
Columbia. On
Tchokola (
Epic, 1991) Ponty combined acoustic and electric violins for the first time with polyrhythmic sounds of West Africa. He performed for two months in the U.S. and Canada with African expatriates he had met in Paris. In 1993, he returned to Atlantic with the album
No Absolute Time. In 1995, he joined guitarist
Al Di Meola and bassist
Stanley Clarke to record an acoustic album,
The Rite of Strings. That trio undertook a six-month tour of North America, South America, and Europe. He reunited his American band in 1996 for live performances following the release of a double album for Atlantic titled
Le Voyage: The Jean-Luc Ponty Anthology. One of these concerts was recorded in
Detroit, Michigan on June 29, 1996, and released in October 1996 by Atlantic under the title
Live at Chene Park. In 1997, Ponty reunited his group of Western and African musicians to pursue the fusion music he had begun to explore in 1991. They toured for three years from the Hawaiian Islands to Poland and in North America and Europe. Ponty performed a duet with bassist
Miroslav Vitous in December 1999. In January 2000, he participated in
Lalo Schifrin's recording
Esperanto. In June 2001 he performed duets with Russian violinist
Vadim Repin and at the Film Music Festival in Poland with American jazz violinist
Regina Carter. In August 2001, Ponty released his album
Life Enigma on his label (J.L.P. Productions), a return to his concept from the 1970s with modern production. He played all the instruments on some tracks and was joined by band members for others. He gave a concert with his band in his native town of
Avranches in Normandy on 21 September 2001. He was honored during a ceremony at City Hall. He then embarked on a tour in the U.S. in October and November 2001. In May 2001, he recorded a concert with the same musicians at the opera house in
Dresden, Germany. That recording was released in July 2002 on
Live at Semper Opera. In January 2003, he toured India for the first time, seven shows in six major cities for the Global Music Festival organized by Indian violinist
L. Subramaniam. Ponty performed on a reunion tour with
Stanley Clarke and
Al Di Meola from June to October 2004 in the U.S. and Canada. In 2005, he toured with Trio! with Stanley Clarke and
Béla Fleck. In 2006, he reunited Jean-Luc Ponty & His Band and toured in the U.S., Chile, Venezuela, Western and Eastern Europe, Russia, The Middle East and India; they recorded a studio album called
The Atacama Experience (2007) with guitarists
Allan Holdsworth and
Philip Catherine. In April 2012, Ponty performed in an acoustic trio with Clarke and guitarist
Bireli Lagrene for the second set of a concert at the
Chatelet Theatre in Paris to celebrate five decades in music. The first set featured Ponty with a string orchestra. In 2014, he recorded a jazz album entitled
D-Stringz with Clarke and Lagrene. In March of 2014,
Jon Anderson, the lead singer of
Yes announced he was forming a new band with Jean Luc Ponty as the result of a mutual friend, Michael Lewis. The project was originally called Inventioning. In July of 2014, the band was formally introduced as the Anderson/Ponty Band. == Work with Return to Forever ==