Aug 09

Barney

No… not the purple dinosaur!

It’s been more than a month since the last post, so bringing out a new piece of music is way-y-y overdue. The new eight-bell piece is the Irish jig Barney Brannigan. It’s a lively, bouncy slip jig that’ll have you dancing even as you’re ringing it!

Jul 03

Children of the Heavenly Father

We have a new eight-bell arrangement, Children of the Heavenly Father. As far as our eight-handbell pieces go, this one is on the easier side – but it’s still fun to play and hear. We hope you’ll give it a try!

Jun 13

For those of you with Yahoo email accounts…

We’ve noticed that some of our customers who have email accounts at yahoo.com are having to wait as much as several days for their download links to arrive. It appears that our e-store is sending the links immediately after purchase, so we’re trying to contact Yahoo to ask for their help in figuring out what’s been happening (if you can help us by contacting them, we’d appreciate that too!).

Meanwhile, we’ve increased the expiration period on download links to five days so that late-arriving links will still be good when you get them.

We’re hoping that we can get this fixed quickly because we know how frustrating it is when you want to get to the music!

May 15

Take the Name of Jesus with You – the Standard Eight-Bell Version!

Sometimes we release the “Surprisingly Easy”™ version of an eight-bell score really quickly, and then it takes a bit longer to arrange or learn the “standard” (whatever that actually means) arrangement. Sometimes it happens in the other order, too – it often just depends on which one came together properly first.

Take the Name of Jesus with You, a joyous eighteenth-century hymn, is a case in point. We’ve had the easier of the two versions available for quite some time, and now we’ve added the standard one too!

We hope you’ll take a look and that you’ll decide to enjoy playing this song of faith with us!

Apr 30

Whew!

If you weren’t able to find us over the last couple of days (April 28-29, 2016), it was because our service provider had a significant hardware failure that made a huge mess at their server farm. They worked and worked, and after “only” about 48 hours have restored service to its usual smooth state. “Only”, you say? Well… we think it can a while to bring millions of gigabytes of data back online safely! They’re probably even more relieved than we are, and are home sleeping after the ordeal, or at least getting some really good coffee.

Anyway, our site is up and running, so you can shop through our music or send us messages now.

We think most of our emails have arrived safely, but there’s a small chance one you sent might have gotten lost in the hubbub. So… if you’ve sent us an email but haven’t gotten a response, please feel free to re-send it so we can answer!

Thanks again for your patience!

Apr 26

Finlandia

There seems to be no end to the repertoire that can be put into eight handbells. That’s good – we wouldn’t want to run out of possibilities!

This time, we have a classical piece to share. Jean Sibelius wrote his Finlandia as a protest against the Russian Empire that wanted to take over Finland in the very late 19th century. It was considered a patriotic work or a subversive device, depending which side you supported.

Today that conflict is past, and Finlandia is regarded as a great classical work. But that’s not all – the last section of the full work is known as the “Finlandia Hymn”, and it has made its way into many churches with Kathrina von Schlegel’s words, entitled Be Still, My Soul. Whether you want to hear or play it as classical music or a hymn, we think you’ll enjoy our eight-bell arrangement.

Apr 08

Flow Gently, Sweet Afton

Larry and Carla are part of Inspiration International, a UK handbell ensemble whose purpose is to take handbell music into the lives of people who sometimes feel forgotten by society.

Since two of the members are in the USA, it’s a challenge for the three to get together to play. So when Larry and Carla visited the UK in February, the trio get together and recorded the English folk song Flow Gently, Sweet Afton as a twelve-bell arrangement which now is available from Choraegus.

Apr 03

Two Titles for One Score!

As you know, many (hymn) tunes are used for more than one set of lyrics. HYFRYDOL, for instance, shows up many times, and often several times in the same hymnal!

We have a new eight-handbell score based on the hymn tune DIX, which doubles as the music for For the Beauty of the Earth and for the Christmas carol As With Gladness Men of Old. Easy peasy – all you have to do is learn one piece of music, and use the correct title depending on the time of year!

Mar 29

The “Sleeping Beauty Waltz” for Sixteen Handbells

In February, we made a trip to England to see friends and family. Alan and Gay Cooper were a couple of those friends; in fact, the four of us together comprise the Pizzazz Handbell Quartet. We spent an evening together, and managed to make a rehearsal video of our new sixteen-handbell arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz. Do take a look!

Mar 27

A Glorious Easter!

He is risen!

It’s Easter Sunday, and we’ll be heading to church to play eight-bell duets in three morning services in a few minutes. We know many of you will be doing – or already are doing (because we’re in California) this as well, and we hope you’ll have a glorious celebration of our risen Savior.

And if you need a bit more handbell music… here’s our eight-bell arrangement of One Day, one of our favorite Easter hymns!

He is risen indeed!