Behold, the Magnetica!

Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t buy into most woo-woo health stuff. I consider myself open-minded, and I’m always willing to be wrong. But I’m dubious of, say, the power of crystals to improve my energy or mood. Essential oil diffusers generally don’t do anything for my anxiety except maybe increase it by giving me a headache and irritated nostrils. I can’t stand fire cider.

However, I don’t begrudge those who do find relief or even healing in alternative practices, regardless of whatever the science of the day has to say about it. As long as all parties involved are entering into whatever openly and honestly — and no one gets hurt — I’m all for it.

Which is how I ended up prone in a zero-gravity chair while a strange woman measured my aura with a giant tuning fork under the watchful eye of a mini-schnauzer mix named Lil’ Spike.

Katherine Quittner is the inventor of the Magnetica, a massive and odd experimental musical instrument that she uses to conduct sound healing concerts from a third-floor studio in downtown Burlington.

If Saruman, the evil wizard from The Lord of the Rings, played a musical instrument, it might look something like the imposing Magnetica. From its square wooden base, 12 nine-foot-tall, curved wooden bows called “arcos” jut upward, three to a side, forming a sort of cage from which Quittner conjures an array of soothing sounds. Each arco is strung with a heavy-gauge sitar string that Quittner can pluck, hammer or bow to achieve deep, resonant tones. In the center of the machine is a console outfitted with Tibetan singing bowls, a tiny wind-up music box, wind chimes, crystals and other assorted noisemakers. There’s also an electronic keyboard, through which Quittner can play melodic lines, chords and a variety of preprogrammed beats.

While the Magnetica is designed to be transported, setup and breakdown are unwieldy and long processes. It’s easier for interested parties to come to Quittner than the other way around, so since May she’s hosted weekly Saturday concerts at the Burlington space to introduce Vermonters to the Magnetica. 

If you’re unfamiliar with sound healing, it’s pretty much what it, ahem, sounds like. The idea is that sonic vibrations, whether from music, singing bowls, tuning forks or more conventional instruments, can be applied therapeutically to relieve stress, anxiety, depression, etc. Its practitioners, of which there are several in Vermont, note that human cultures have employed varieties of sound healing for millennia as evidence of its efficacy. Science is less certain, though there is growing evidence that sound healing does … something. Which makes sense.

The U.S. government has literally used noise to torture people, so who’s to say a deftly plucked string or ringing crystal couldn’t knock something loose in a good way?

Quittner is a highly trained classical composer who spent 15 years as a movie music editor and supervisor in Hollywood. You’ve surely seen some of the flicks she’s worked on: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, UHF, Father of the Bride. It’s a long list.

She was living in Uruguay in 2008 when the idea for the Magnetica came to her and she drew a sketch of it. As she tells it, she didn’t know what the thing was, exactly, but she knew what it was for.

“I knew it was for sound healing,” Quittner explained recently at her Burlington studio. “I knew it was to help people.”

Quittner, 73, is small, wiry and energetic with a shock of frizzy white hair. The Los Angeles native speaks plainly but is prone to both digressions and sarcasm. She understands people will be skeptical of the Magnetica. She just doesn’t especially care.

“People who believe something like this is possible are more likely to benefit from it,” she said with a matter-of-fact shrug.

She began constructing the Magnetica in Uruguay with the help of a friend who was a boatbuilder. It took them six years to complete it, and another two for Quittner to dial in the electronics. She finally debuted the instrument at a concert in Miami in 2016. Quittner moved to Vermont in 2021.

Quittner stresses that what she does is not a medical practice. She makes no specific claims about what ailments a Magnetica sound healing concert can fix, though it’s clear she believes there’s more floating in the ether than relaxing sounds.

“You have to be responsible if you have a talent like this,” she said. “I have to be careful and not tell people a bunch of bullshit that they want to hear.”

Capacity at her Magnetica concerts is 12 people — one for each for arco — though attendance has been hit or miss. Concertgoers recline in comfy zero-gravity chairs in a circle around the machine, which is illuminated by twinkling string lights. Stage-style lighting elsewhere bathes the room in soothing blues and reds.

Quittner said she draws on the energy of those in the room and that her Magnetica performances are always improvised, since the vibe is always different from audience to audience. Once everyone is relaxed and she gets a good blend of strings, singing bowls, harmonic overtones and beats going, she’ll venture into the audience with her tuning forks to assess individual auras and interact with attendees on more personal levels. Each concert costs $40 and lasts for an hour.

I only got a sampling of what concertgoers experience during my demonstration. I can’t vouch for the alignment or length of my aura and whether it changed while Quittner passed over me with her forks, but I will say it was calming. The Magnetica’s soothing harmonics had a lulling effect, briefly relaxing my body and clearing my mind. Even Li’l Spike settled down.

Burlington musician Johnnie Day Durand had a similar experience.

Durand is a musical saw player and member of the local band Silver Bridget. In an email, she described a Magnetica concert a few weeks ago as “deeply relaxing on a level that really surpasses any other notion of a sound healing experience that I can imagine.” She recounted being “washed over by the most beautiful river of long resonating tones and vibrations that feel ancient and sacred … alongside a transcendental electronica soundscape that all together create a profound and tranquil sense of timelessness.”

None of this validates the Magnetica as anything more than a very interesting and unique musical instrument. But maybe that’s enough to help get in touch with deeper parts of ourselves.

Ian Dartley contributed reporting.

Correction, October 24, 2024: This story has been corrected to reflect that Katherine Quittner moved to Vermont in 2021 and that Magnetica concerts happen weekly on Saturdays.

This article appears in The Tech Issue 2024.

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