Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival

Woodstock Music & Art Fair (informally, Woodstock or The Woodstock Festival) was a music festival, billed as "An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music", held at Max Yasgur's 600-acre (2.4 km²; 240 ha, 0.94 mi²) dairy farm near the hamlet of White Lake in the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to August 18, 1969. Bethel, in Sullivan County, is 43 miles (69 km) southwest of the town of Woodstock, New York, in adjoining Ulster County.

During the sometimes rainy weekend, thirty-two acts performed outdoors in front of 500,000 concert-goers. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most pivotal moments in popular music history and was listed among Rolling Stone's 50 Moments That Changed the History of Rock and Roll.

Sound for the concert was engineered by Bill Hanley, whose innovations in the sound industry have earned him the prestigious Parnelli Award. "It worked very well," he says of the event. "I built special speaker columns on the hills and had 16 loudspeaker arrays in a square platform going up to the hill on 70-foot [21 meter] towers. We set it up for 150,000 to 200,000 people. Of course, 500,000 showed up." ALTEC designed 4-15 marine ply cabinets that weighed in at half a ton apiece, stood 6 feet (1.8 m) straight up, almost 4 feet (1.2 m) deep, and 3 feet (0.91 m) wide. Each of these woofers carried four 15-inch (380 mm) JBL LANSING D140 loudspeakers. The tweeters consisted of 4x2-Cell & 2x10-Cell Altec Horns. Behind the stage were three transformers providing 2,000 amperes of current to power the amplification setup. For many years this system was collectively referred to as the Woodstock Bins.

Performing artists

Thirty-two acts performed over the course of the four days:
Friday, August 15

* Richie Havens
* Swami Satchidananda - gave the invocation for the festival
* Sweetwater
* The Incredible String Band
* Bert Sommer
* Tim Hardin
* Ravi Shankar
* Melanie
* Arlo Guthrie
* Joan Baez

Saturday, August 16

* Quill, forty-minute set of four songs
* Country Joe McDonald
* John Sebastian
* Santana
* Keef Hartley Band
* Canned Heat
* Mountain
* Grateful Dead
* Creedence Clearwater Revival
* Janis Joplin with The Kozmic Blues Band [25]
* Sly & the Family Stone
* The Who began at 4 a.m., kicking off a 25-song set including Tommy
* Jefferson Airplane

Sunday, August 17 to Monday, August 18

* The Grease Band
* Joe Cocker
* Country Joe and the Fish
* Ten Years After
* The Band
* Blood, Sweat & Tears
* Johnny Winter featuring his brother, Edgar Winter
* Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
* Paul Butterfield Blues Band
* Sha-Na-Na
* Jimi Hendrix