Garry Kvistad will present “My Life in Music.” Mr. Kvistad founded and operated Woodstock Chimes for 42 years and sold the company in 2021. He created it by integrating musical themes (about which he is a scholar) from many regions and times, which made it a worldwide seller. The talk will focus on the natural inspiration of musical harmony that seduced Garry into building instruments and making musical wind chimes. He will be joined by vocalist Timothy Hill who is an accomplished harmonic overtone singer. Together they will perform and demonstrate the magical sounds of vocal and instrumental harmony. Garry will present some of his unique instrumental creations.
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Garry Kvistad joined Nexus in the Fall of 2002 when John Wyre, one of the group’s original members, retired. He has been performing and recording with Nexus co-founders Bob Becker and Russell Hartenberger since joining Steve Reich and Musicians in 1980. Garry is one of 18 musicians to win a Grammy award for the 1998 recording of Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians.
Garry attended the Interlochen Arts Academy where he studied with Jack McKenzie and Michael Ranta. He earned his BM from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied with Cloyd Duff and Richard Weiner and his MM from Northern Illinois University, where he studied music, art, and physics in the pursuit of musical instrument building. In 1993 Northern Illinois University honored him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In the 1970s, Garry worked with composer/conductor Lucas Foss as a Creative Associate in Buffalo, New York, after which he joined the faculties of Northern Illinois University and the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music. During that time, he co-founded the Blackearth Percussion Group which recorded and toured in the US, Canada, and Europe. Kvistad has served as the timpanist and percussionist with the Chicago Grant Park Symphony, was a summer Tanglewood Fellow, and a percussionist with the Cabrillo Music Festival Orchestra, California.
He has been featured in performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, as well as many others in North America and Europe. The Balinese Gong Kebyar Gamelan ensemble, Giri Mekar, which he formed in 1987, is currently in residence at Bard College where Garry serves as faculty advisor to the Conservatory of Music. Garry is the founder and CEO of Woodstock Percussion, Inc., makers of Woodstock Chimes® and musical instruments for children. He is a 1995 winner of Ernst & Young/Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Southern New England Region and served as a New York state delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Small Business. In 2021 after 42 years and 35 million chimes produced, he and his wife sold their business.
Garry served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Woodstock Guild, Woodstock, NY until 2008; and as a member of the Board of Advisors of The Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, Arkville, NY. Garry was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society’s Hall of Fame in 2020, joining percussion greats such as Ringo Star, Jack DeJohnette, and Evelyn Glennie.
Garry lives in beautiful upstate New York with his wife Diane, lots of pets and houseplants. They have two daughters, Tasa and Maya, both following artistic paths.
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Timothy Hill is one of the pioneers in the art of harmonic (overtone) singing as it developed in the west. Joining David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir in the late 1970s, he appears on numerous recordings with them, including the seminal Hearing Solar Winds. The New York Times called Hill “A virtuoso of the Tibetan chanting technique.” He also appears on Baird Hersey and Prana’s recording Chiaroscuro with Nexus, on Brooklyn Raga Massive’s performance of Terry Riley’s In C, and on unique collaborations with composer-accordionist Pauline Oliveros, clarinetist-author David Rothenberg and singer-violinist Iva Bittová.