Woodstock Chimes Company Description:

Woodstock Chimes are the original, musically-tuned, high-quality windchimes known worldwide for their superior sound. When listening to a Woodstock Chime, you hear a fine musical instrument played by the wind, perfectly hand-tuned using the ancient system of “just intonation” based on natural harmonics. This means the frequencies at which the different tubes vibrate are related to one another by simple whole-number ratios. Tones that are related in this way produce the most beautiful musical intervals. The sonic effect is exceptionally pure and soothing.

More than 30 years ago, the first Woodstock Chime was created by founder and owner Garry Kvistad from an aluminum lawn chair he found in a landfill. As a professional musician and instrument designer, he was fascinated by the Scales of Olympos, a 7th century pentatonic scale that can’t be played on a modern piano. Garry had the idea to cut and tune the lawn chair tubes to the exact frequency of the ancient scale. The resulting Chimes of Olympos was the first Woodstock Chime and is still one of our bestselling windchimes. Garry and his wife Diane founded Woodstock Percussion, Inc. in 1979 and it remains a family-owned business in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Garry Kvistad's Biography

Garry's passion for music started when he joined the school band in the 4th grade. Little did he know then that 40-some years later he would win a Grammy! At age 14 Garry attended the Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to earn a Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He received a Masters of Music from Northern Illinois University, where he studied music, art and physics in the pursuit of building musical instruments. In 1993 Northern Illinois University honored him with its Distinguished Alumni Award. In the 1970's Garry worked with composer/conductor Lucas Foss as a Creative Associate in Buffalo, New York, after which he joined the faculty of Northern Illinois University before moving on to the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. During this time he co-founded the Blackearth Percussion Group, which recorded and toured in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

It was also during this time that Garry built his first metallophone, a xylophone-like instrument made with metal instead of wood. Being a recent college graduate, Garry found the materials for his metallophone at the local landfill - it was made from the aluminum tubes of discarded lawn chairs! Garry was fascinated by the Scales of Olympos, a 7th century Greek pentatonic scale that can't be played on a modern piano. His metallophone experiment was so successful that he had the idea to cut and tune lawn chair tubes to the exact frequency of the scale and create a windchime from the tubes. It was the perfect instrument that the wind could play randomly. Plus you don't need formal musical training to appreciate the beautiful sound. The Chime of Olympos® was the first Woodstock Chime and is still one of our best selling products.

Garry has served as the timpanist and percussionist with the Chicago Grant Park Symphony, was a summer Tanglewood Fellow and worked as a percussionist with the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra in California. He has been featured in performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic, as well as many other orchestras in North America and Europe. Giri Mekar, the Balinese Gong Kebyar Gamelan ensemble which he formed in 1987, is currently in residence at Bard College in Red Hook, New York.

In 1980 Garry started performing with Steve Reich and Musicians, and he is one of 18 musicians to win a Grammy award for the 1998 recording of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians. During this time he met and performed with Bob Becker and Russell Hartenberger, two of the original founders of NEXUS, a world renown percussion group. Garry has been performing and touring extensively with NEXUS since 2002, when John Wyre, one of the founding members of the group, retired. Considered one of, if not the, premier percussion ensembles in the world today, the New York Times has called NEXUS "the high priests of the percussion world."

Garry and his wife, Diane, are active in the Woodstock Community helping to reinforce support for the arts and food and shelter programs. Through their charitable foundation, The Woodstock Chimes Fund, they have assisted artists and humanitarian efforts mostly in the Hudson Valley. They are proud of the attitude their employees take toward these values, as well as the company's commitment to sustainable business practices. 2009 marked the 30th year of Woodstock Chimes, which are now and have always been "Powered by the Wind."