We made an update to our “standard” eight-bell arrangement of ‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime recently. Because only the first page was changed, we’ve decided to offer it as a free download until Sunday, November 22nd. Come and get your free copy – you’ll love playing it!
Nov 11
Veteran’s Day
(Larry writing…)
It’s incredible to think about the sacrifices “The Greatest Generation” made on our behalf. In the desperate times of World War II, they saw the need and committed themselves to solving the problems created by the Axis powers. It was no different twenty-five years before, when a different – but still huge – conflict enveloped so much of the world.
There were many other conflicts before that, and there have been many since. Yet, somehow, our world hasn’t disintegrated – God has watched over us, and sent heroes and heroines to stand in the breach created by our frailties.
That’s why we celebrate Veteran’s Day in the USA, and why in the UK it also is a time to remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for us.
Oct 23
Christmas (Rehearsal) is on the Horizon!
If you’re a musician, practice for anything starts weeks ahead. If it’s a big presentation like a church Christmas concert, then my experience has been that those rehearsals start about three months in advance. After all, we want to put our best foot forward on the evening when we have one of the largest congregations of the year!
We’ve been posting lots of music that you can play for Christmas (and the rest of the year as well!):
- Eight-bell music has been our biggest category of pieces. It’s particularly exciting to us that we now have enough Christmas pieces of this type to fill an entire two-hour shift at the Salvation Army kettle without having to repeat anything.
- Twelve-bell pieces – for four-in-hand trio, two-in-hand sextet, or anything between, build upon the existing body of twelve-bell music. Did you notice that Georges Bizet’s Farandole fits quite nicely into a dozen diatonic notes?
- Sixteen-bell music is a great idea for those times you have enough intrepid four-in-hand ringers who want to play some challenging music. By the way, we’re looking for videos since the two of us haven’t yet mastered Danny Lyons’ famous eight-in-hand technique!
- There also are other pieces for “regular” handbell choirs. They range from two to seven octaves, so there’ll be something for your group (even though those pieces may not specifically be for Christmas – no matter, it means you’ll have more time to practice before spring!
Do look around. We hope you’ll find lots of music to play, and that you’ll have a wonderful holiday season.
Sep 23
O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go
Now and then we’ll be in church, and ask ourselves, “Would the song we just sang work with just eight bells?” Then we check the hymnal, count the number of melody notes, and start wondering… until we get home and try writing an arrangement.
That’s what happened with O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go a few Sundays ago. We hope you’ll like it!
Sep 17
New Eight-Bell Music!
We have one more eight-handbell hymn arrangement to share before we start bringing our new Christmas selections out!
Sep 10
Go Tell It on the Mountain
Bass handbell ensemble music hasn’t been doing a lot of growth since Low Ding Zone decided to head off into the sunset. Come to think of it, LDZ might have been the only source of music of that sort for most of its existence.
Anyway, one piece that LDZ might have played, but certainly never managed to record, is Go Tell It on the Mountain. Fortunately, the Seattle Bass Handbell Ensemble made a great video of it on 2009!
Sep 07
Friends with Videos
No… not *those* kinds of friends with videos… (nudge, nudge, 😉 😉 )
Actually, we’re referring to friends who like playing our music enough to post videos to the Internet. It’s exciting when this happens, because it means that someone else is ministering to their church family, or learning new skills, or just plain having fun!
- “Ring 4 Glory” Quartet of the First United Methodist Church of Pacific Grove, California has been recording their Sunday morning performances. They’ve found that eight-bell music suits their needs really well. Just recently, they posted videos of themselves playing To God Be the Glory and Shalom Chaverim.
- The handbell quartet at Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado shared a rehearsal video of O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus. It’s become one of their regular Good Friday pieces!
- We also had the privilege of performing O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus as a double duet last year at the HMA (Handbell Musicians of America) Area 10 conference. It’s a great idea if you have the opportunity to bring multiple duos together!
However, by no means do we want to leave anyone else out. If you’ve made a video of yourself playing some of our music, let us know if you’d like us to add a link here!
Sep 04
Twelve-Bell Christmas Music is Here!
We’ve been holding onto five new twelve-bell Christmas arrangements, and the time has come to let you have a look at them. You’ll find them to be loads of fun, and there’s plenty of time to prepare them for the holidays!
Here are our new pieces – we hope you enjoy playing them!
- Angels We Have Heard on High
- Bring A Torch, Jeanette Isabella
- Ding Dong, Merrily on High
- It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
- We Three Kings
We also thank J.C. for helping us with recording the videos!
Aug 28
Welcome to the New Season!
If you’re a church musician, August/September is about the time to start the new season (should I delay the first rehearsal until after Labor Day*? what can we have ready for the first Sunday we’re scheduled? And so on, and so forth).
If you’re in a minor squeeze because that first service with music is starting to look a bit tenuous, we have good news for you. We’ve just released our third “Surprisingly Easy”™ Eight-Bell Hymn Collection. We’re sure you’ll like it – the seven hymns that comprise it are long-time favorites in many churches:
Praise to the Lord
Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above
All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name (hymn tune: CORONATION)
At the Cross
Great is Thy Faithfulness
Jesus Shall Reign
He Keeps Me Singing
All you have to do is get the music, and then find two, three, or four handbell players. As they say in England, “easy peasy”.
Have fun, and welcome to a new music season!
*For those of you who aren’t familiar with US holidays, Labor Day is the first Monday in September.
Aug 23
Bay View: Winding Down from the High
We’re heading home from Michigan after five wonderful days at the Bay View Week of Handbells. For those of you who don’t know about it, BVWoH is a handbell performance event where about 100 musicians get together, rehearse for about twenty-five hours, and perform in an evening concert. It’s a huge commitment (among other things, we’re supposed to go there ready to play all of our music at score tempo on the first downbeat), and it’s tremendous fun with very special family and friends.
The venue is at the Bay View Association, originally a Methodist ministers’ retreat on the shore of Lake Michigan. The Victorian-era houses have lots of character, and going to the shore is just a matter of crossing Highway 31 (carefully during tourist season!). If you poke around the rocks by the water, you often can find some Petoskey stones – they’re fossilized Hexagonaria polyps (so… prehistoric coral). We found a few, and will be trying our hand at polishing them when we get home.
The concert is a magnificent experience. Given that we’re playing seven-and-a-half octaves of bells as a ten-choir mass ring, the sound is insanely wonderful. Carl Wiltse and Fred Gramann, our leaders-at-podium, give us the benefit of their deep and profound experience, and integrate our individual flailings into a coherent whole that often thrills the audience that arrives on Thursday evening at 8:00 . The thrill is for them too, I think – when we went to lunch in town the following day, someone in the restaurant recognized us and thanked us!
It’s the type of experience you want – no, need – to take home with you. Most of the time this doesn’t happen because recording handbell programs can be a notoriously difficult undertaking. We’re singularly blessed at BVWoH to have Pierpont Productions to record and produce CDs and DVDs of the concert. If you want to see and hear what it’s like, you can order one from them!
Because we love visiting “the Mitten” (for those of you who don’t know, Michganders call the Southern Peninsula by that term because it looks like one) so much, we’ve also bookended our Bay View time with weekends in Traverse City and Holland. Those extra days are worth hundreds or thousands of additional words, but I won’t go into detail right now.
So… how do we return to real life after such a musical high? We’re planning to be back, and perhaps that’ll sustain us during the other 51 weeks of the year.
