This graceful and spirited chime is named for the Chionin Buddhist temple in Kyoto, which houses one of the largest ringing bells in the world. It takes 17 monks to ring the 74-ton bell, 16 of them to raise the giant wooden hammer by pulling it away from the bell with hanging ropes, while the 17th monk rides the hammer, pushing off with his legs in the split second before impact. Ringing the massive bell is an important New Year’s event and the chiming lasts for 20 minutes. It only takes a gentle breeze to play the Woodstock Chimes of Kyoto and you will have years of pleasurable sounds reminiscent of the Japanese Koto, the musical instrument from which it gets its beautiful tuning.Over 30 years ago, Grammy award-winning musician and instrument designer Garry Kvistad created the first Woodstock Chime from an aluminum lawn chair he found in a landfill. Fascinated by the Scale of Olympos, a 7th century pentatonic scale that can’t be played on a modern piano, Garry cut and tuned 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 best selling, musically-tuned windchimes. Garry and his wife Diane founded Woodstock Chimes in 1979 and still develop the chimes today. It remains a family-owned business in New York’s Hudson Valley.