May 09

Botany Bay

Sorry, no… we’re not taking a trip to Australia at the moment (we’d love to, one day). But we do have some music that’s played in Australia. Today’s new release is Botany Bay, a song that refers to the penal colony Down Under by that name (you might also remember something from one of the Star Trek movies…).

The precise origins of the song are a bit unclear, but it’s known that it became popular in nineteenth-century London as one of the selections in the musicals of that time.

May 02

Morning Song

We had the privilege of playing the opening concert at an event sponsored by  Handbell Musicians of America’s Area 5 on Mackinac Island in April 2018. It was an opportunity for us to get to know and to share with our fellow handbell musicians from the northern Midwest

Our arrangement of MORNING SONG was one of the pieces we premiered that evening. We hope you’ll enjoy playing it!

Apr 17

Need to play for someone’s birthday?

We recorded our eight-bell arrangement of Happy Birthday a few years ago, but realized that we hadn’t made it available for others to play. Since it’s only eight bars long and takes less than a minute to play, we’ve decided to make it free to anyone who would like to get it.

Have fun!

Apr 04

Calmer Sailing Ahead

If you haven’t noticed (perhaps you’ve been on a nice, long Caribbean cruise?), we’ve been going through a little bit of craziness over the past few weeks. Our website was in limbo, the bottom line being that no one could see it, or browse, or shop, or buy music.

Anyway, the Choraegus site is up and running again, and we’ll be bringing out more music for your ringing/singing/playing enjoyment soon!

But first, we’re going to celebrate with a bit of Netflix and watching the Lake Michigan snow that’s enhancing our garden… 🙂

Mar 31

Hooray – Rehosting is completed!

Some of you have gone through the potentially harrowing experience of rehosting a website. There are a number of steps that sometimes mean your site goes down for a while; some of those steps can lead to a bit of angst as you jump through the requisite hoops.

I’m happy to report that the Choraegus site is now fully operational! You might recall that the last step was getting our SSL certificate working. This is indicated by being able to access our site using a web-secure link such as https://www.choraegus.com. Once you can see the “https://” at the beginning of your browser’s URL (sometimes indicated by a little padlock), you know that your visit to our site is safe and secure. Shop with confidence!

Thank you for bearing with us through this slightly bumpy bit of our adventure. On to even greater things!

Mar 29

Rehosting…

We’ve been in the process of rehosting our site for the last couple of weeks. We apologize for our site being unavailable during that time.

As of today (March 29, 2018) we’re getting close but aren’t quite there. Pretty much everything works, except that we still have to reactivate our e-store. That’s a significant problem, and we’re looking into what needs to be done. Meanwhile, you can now browse our pages, and see what will be once again available once we make those last few fixes.

If you need to get some music from us immediately, do contact us, and we’ll figure out how to keep you ringing and having fun!

Feb 20

Happy https:// to you!

We’d like to apologize to those of you who’ve noted that our site’s appeared to be “insecure” over the past couple of days. There was a little bit of difficulty with our SSL certificates which has now been fixed. Browsing the Choraegus site is now perfectly safe, and we hope you’ll keep on visiting to discover the music we have for you to play.

So… it’s a bit more than halfway through our second Michigan winter. The snowfall in Holland has been rather closer to normal than last year’s teensy total of “only” 56 inches. When we haven’t been shoveling, we’ve had lots of opportunity to write and rehearse new music. We’ve already put out a couple of new twelve-bell pieces in the last month, and there’s a lot more in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future!

Feb 13

Thou Hidden Source of Calm Repose

We all go through difficult, unsettling circumstances from time to time. The hymn Thou Hidden Source of Calm Repose is one of those reminders that God is in control, and that He can make sense of life when it seems scrambled.

Here’s our new twelve-bell arrangement of this hymn!

Jan 22

How Great Thou Art – Twelve Handbells

After a great Christmas season (and a very, very busy December), we’re heading into 2018 with lots of music. Today we’re leading off with our new twelve-bell arrangement of How Great Thou Art. We think you’ll enjoy playing it, and that your church families will love hearing it.

It’s available in two versions, one for the traditional twelve-bell range C5-G6, and one based on “normal bell choir assignments” for F5-C7.

Happy ringing!

Jan 01

Happy 2018!

Happy New Year to all of you (or as they say in some places, “all y’all”)!

We’ve had a fun year finding videos and receiving emails about who’s been playing our music. The greatest number of stories are about our eight-handbell repertoire. Most of what we’ve seen is videos of four-in-hand duets or one-bell-in-each-hand quartets playing at their church services. But there are others!

  • In New York, Natalia Paruz and her ringing partner Richard have been taking our music not only to churches, but also to local cemeteries (yes, you read that correctly). If you happen to be in NYC, you also get a chance to see Natalia playing her musical saw – she’s exceptional!
  • Honolulu Bronze performs on Oahu either as a duet or trio. When there are three ringers, one of their members plays four of the bells while the others have two apiece.
  • Robin and Jeffrey in Washington State got out to play at a local mall. They took about two dozen of our pieces so they could play a two-hour stint there, and passers-by loved their music.
  • Melodiem, a young handbell ensemble in Singapore, has been playing lots and lots of music. In their playlist, they include some of our eight-bell music, and did a fantastic presentation of our sixteen-bell Sleeping Beauty Waltz with six ringers.

We’re looking forward to having even more fun in the coming year. If you have a story or video about our music, do share it with us!!