About the ChimeMaker
Long Beach California artist Jacob Sokoloff is a thoughtful, articulate man sincerely devoted to his craft — a man who feels that somehow he has always had a “true, organic calling” to make musical instruments.
As an anthropology student at California State University Long Beach, he studied Japanese Classical and East Indian music. Living in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, Jacob’s first designs were flutes and beautiful gourd harps made from natural materials using only hand tools.
Knowing that his mother collected windchimes, in 1981 Jacob created a set of chimes he called a “musical instrument for the wind” as a gift to her. This was the original Waterfall chime. Friends and family were taken with the magical and enchanting sounds produced by these chimes, and encouraged him to make a few more. That he did, selling them at arts and craft shows all over California.
As his business grew in size, Jacob’s sister Fern joined full time in 1985 to help with sales. Like two pieces of a puzzle, brother and sister’s talents blended and the business grew rapidly. Fern took Jacob’s work to the hand crafted juried sections of wholesale gift shows throughout the country, where an emphasis on hand made American craft provided a successful outlet for the chimes. Before long they were offering Jacob’s work exclusively to the wholesale market.
Jacob’s overriding emphasis in the design of his windchimes is the musical quality of the sound. The pitch of each pipe, the relative tuning of the whole chime, and the “sweetness” or purity of each tone are all factors that he constantly refines, years after creating that first, magical chime.
Because this element of sound quality is so fundamental to the success of a chime, Jacob takes extreme care in making sure the tuning and resonant quality of each pipe meets his exacting standards. He carefully evaluates each new batch of raw pipe, adjusting for differences in seam and alloy composition which can affect pitch and create discordant sounds. Out of this evaluation comes a set of “masters,” which are used to cut the batch of pipe.
When describing the rewards of his work, Jacob emphasizes his fundamental desire to make something beautiful — “a musical instrument for the wind.” The musical quality of Jacob’s chimes was proven again when composer William Kraft, an admirer of Jacob’s work, gave the Waterfall a prominent part in the percussion score of a piece performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. His greatest pleasure, says the chime maker, is “in making something that feels perfect every time.”