The Drum Boogie Festival®, a multi-cultural arts event, celebrates and promotes the many styles of high quality percussion music found throughout the world. The festival strives to keep a balance of entertainment, enlightenment, excitement and equality. All performances will highlight percussion instruments and percussion performers while sometimes including other instrumentalists, dancers and singers. Garry Kvistad, founder and CEO of Woodstock Chimes, is a professional musician and creator/Executive Director of the Drum Boogie Festival which was held in 2009 and 2011.

The Drum Boogie Festival is held biennially. The next day long festival is scheduled for September 2013. The next Drum Boogie Event will be during the inaugural Byrdcliffe Festival of the Arts at the historic Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, NY this summer, July 13-15. The Woodstock Chimes® Fund is the presenting sponsor of the Drum Boogie Festival® but donations are greatly appreciated.

The Woodstock Chimes Fund was established in 1986 by Woodstock Chimes founders and owners Garry and Diane Kvistad to support the Arts and Food and Shelter Programs in the Hudson Valley and beyond. Woodstock Chimes believes a community can be judged by how it values the Arts and the way in which its members respond to those in need. What’s more, we believe we have a responsibility as a corporate citizen to give back to the community which has helped make our success possible.

Welcome.

Coming Soon…Drum Boogie Festival 2013!

Stay tuned for upcoming news for Drum Boogie Festival 2013!

Most recent past Drum Boogie Festival event:

Fabulous Drum Boogie In Woodstock

The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild presented the first ever Byrdcliffe Festival of the Arts in Woodstock, NY (Colony of the Arts) from Friday, July 13th to Sunday, July 15th.  The Drum Boogie Festival was one of nine Festival Presenting Partners that Byrdcliffe joined creative forces with. The schedule was jam-packed with a diverse selection of artistically rich presentations: story-telling (the spoken and written word), film, dance, music (and the sung word).

On Saturday, the DRUM BOOGIE FESTIVAL® offered a concert called “Garry and Friends,” which was a mini-version of our biennial, all-day-long DRUM BOOGIE FESTIVAL. The “Garry and Friends” concert exemplified the Drum Boogie theme, it was definitely -A Celebration of World Drums and Drummers- with performances in the first set by: Matoaka Little Eagle and Powhatan Swift Eagle, Valerie Naranjo and Barry Olsen, POOK and Evry Mann and the Energy Dance Company, and in the second set by: NEXUS members yours truly and Russell Hartenberger with guest Chris Earley. The audience participated in numerous ways: clapping, singing, toe-tapping – heads were bopping and I saw a few jaws drop in amazement too. The audience was turned on and responded wildly to the eclectic mix of world-class drummers and dancers. The instruments were acoustic but the feeling in the Byrdcliffe Barn was electric.  In fact, I built a set of three acoustic instruments for the Steve Reich piece we did, Mallet Phase.  The three instruments, tuned in the ancient system of ‘just intonation’, were a large African style xylophone, a very large metallophone made of Woodstock Chimes tubes and a cool sounding instrument made of resonators on which the openings are “slapped” with flip-flop like mallets.

On Sunday, the DRUM BOOGIE FESTIVAL® offered a workshop for children ages 5-12 led by musician and music educator Dave Laks. The workshop called, “Open Ears” taught participants how to build an instrument –in this case a tambourine with a personal story or design depicted on the drum head! Dave paced his workshop with the seasoned wisdom of an educator; there were periods of concentration mixed with break-out sessions of participation and movement. The great selections of music that accompanied his lesson helped focus and energize the participants accordingly. Each child was accompanied by a parent, friend or guardian -they seemed to enjoy the workshop as much as their young attendee.

We’re happy that the Woodstock Chimes Fund produced the Drum Boogie Festival element of the Byrdcliffe Festival of the Arts event.  All in all we had a great time and we feel this ‘festival of festivals’ ignited anticipation for our next all-day-long, Free DRUM BOOGIE FESTIVAL® – in Fall 2013. Keep posted and poised to boogie with us again!  A big thank you goes out to all that made that weekend of amazing events happen.

Garry Kvistad