Monthly Archives: June 2015

Counting Down to the Bay View Week of Handbells!

We’re counting down to the Bay View Week of Handbells!

So, what is the Bay View Week of Handbells, and why is it something special for us? Why are we counting down the days until we get there? We’ll try to explain some of the magic here.

The Bay View Week of Handbells takes place every year in Bay View, Michigan. Just over a hundred handbell musicians gather together for several days of intense rehearsals, after which we perform a public concert. Donald Allured founded the Week of Handbells in 1978, and Carl Wiltse is the current director of the event. It’s for people who enjoy the challenge of spending time learning the music, and performing to a professional standard. And yes, even though the music is challenging and the rehearsals are intense, we still manage to have fun!

The Week of Handbells is part of our story

For us, the Week of Handbells is particularly special because of the role it played in our long-distance relationship story. Our story started several years ago when we met and became friends online. By the end of 2009 we were spending several hours every day “talking” on Facebook Chat. Our friendship turned into a relationship, and we began to make plans to meet in person for the first time. Our first “real life” meeting took place in August 2010, when Carla travelled from London to Chicago O’Hare. From there, we flew together to Traverse City, where we rented a car and drove to Bay View.

Here is a photo of us before the concert at our very first Bay View Week of Handbells.

Bay View Week of Handbells - Larry and Carla

Our second Week of Handbells

After our first in-person meeting in 2010, we had to wait a whole year before we could see each other again. During our months apart, we decided for certain that we wanted to spend our future together. We travelled back to Michigan in August 2011 for our second Week of Handbells. That was a busy week for us! Before the start of the event, we made a special journey to Miner’s North in Traverse City to pick up some rings. Then we drove to the Old Mission Point Lighthouse, where Larry proposed, and Carla said yes!

Mission Point Lighthouse

We announced our engagement to our friends at the Week of Handbells, at the evening reception after the first day of rehearsals. Here’s one of our favourite photos of us – taken by Kim Finison at Bay View in 2011.

Larry and Carla, by Kim Finison

August 2011 was also the time when our set of Malmark handbells made it across the ocean in Carla’s luggage. Larry transferred them to his suitcase for the journey to California.

After our week in Michigan in 2011, we went back to our separate homes, and soon after that we started the US fiancée visa process to bring Carla from England to California. Carla’s K-1 visa was approved at the end of May 2012, and the race was on to get everything organised for the big move. We managed to time it to coincide with the Bay View Week of Handbells in August!

Closing the distance!

August arrived, and Larry flew to England to collect Carla and her son, and the three of us travelled together to Chicago O’Hare. There, our onward flight was cancelled and we were forced to spend an uncomfortable night camping in the airport. Strangely enough, the makeshift camp was at Gate K1. That’s the same number as the visa Carla had applied for! Bay View Week of Handbells 2012 was a very special one for us, because, for the first time, we didn’t have to say goodbye to each other at the end of the event. It was an amazing feeling to be able to pack up our things and travel home to California together, without having to do that horrible airport goodbye stuff that’s so painful for long-distance couples.

Since then, we’ve been to the Week of Handbells twice more. To say we’re looking forward to the next one would be an understatement. Well, we’re counting down the days on our website, right? So yes, we’re excited!

Even without all the memories that make the Week of Handbells so special to us personally, it’s still an incredibly wonderful handbell event. We always tell people that if we could only go to one handbell event in a year, this would be the one we’d choose. After all, where else can you play handbells in an Auditorium that’s named after a Hall?

John M Hall Auditorium

And where else can you walk around during your lunch break and see houses like this one?

Bay View Victorian cottage

At the Bay View Week of Handbells, we have Tiara Tuesday!

Tiara Tuesday at Bay View Week of Handbells

We have the opportunity to play some exciting and challenging music, which each person works hard to prepare during the weeks and months before the event. That gives us four days to put together the finishing touches as a group, in time to give a superb concert on the Thursday evening.

Bay View Week of Handbells concert

Apart from the beautiful location, the exciting music and all the happy memories the Week of Handbells holds for us, we know that it’s the people there who make this event so special. Our annual trip to Bay View feels like a journey home; and the friends we’ve made there feel like family to us. For just a few days in August, more than a hundred people are brought together by the music of handbells. We wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Larry and Carla with Carl Wiltse

For more photos, see our Bay View Week of Handbells Photo Gallery. Watch our website and Facebook page for more information as we continue counting down the days to this year’s event!

New Music for Handbells – our Second “Surprisingly Easy” Hymn Collection

Following on from our first Surprisingly Easy™ Eight-Bell Hymn Collection – here is a new collection! Once again, it’s all the music, but without the twiddly bits.

If you’re looking for some new handbell pieces to enhance your worship service, but you don’t want them to take too long to learn, this collection could be the answer. If you’re part of a duet, trio or quartet, or your handbell choir is enthusiastic but small in number, these hymns could be what you’re looking for!

The hymns included in this second collection are:

  • All Creatures of Our God and King
  • Just As I Am
  • All the Way My Savior Leads Me
  • It is Well with My Soul
  • Amazing Grace
  • Jesus Walked this Lonesome Valley
  • Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken
  • Praise Him! Praise Him!

Would you like to play these arrangements?

If you’d like to purchase and download this hymn collection for your group to play, it’s available from Choraegus. Each of the hymns is also available separately.  

Please note that Choraegus handbell music is designed to be downloaded as PDF files. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything by mail. Please read our licensing agreement for full details. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we also recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this to make the purchase process stress-free for you!

Any questions?

If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, you might like to check our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the information you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!

Hymn Collection - 2nd surprisingly easy handbell music
Choraegus – Bringing Music to the People

New Music for Handbells – A Mighty Fortress Is Our God

The weekend is here, and it’s time for some more new handbell music!  Here’s our 8-bell arrangement of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; one of the best loved hymns of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions. Martin Luther wrote the melody and words around 1529.

If you’d like to play A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, the music is available for purchase and download from our music site.

This arrangement has no bell-sharing, no picking-up of accidentals during the piece, and no need for tables. It’s suitable for 2-4 ringers.

Information about buying Choraegus handbell music

Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials.

Please also note that our music is designed as downloadable PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.

If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide, designed to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!

New Music for Handbells – Greensleeves (with Squirrel)

Greensleeves is one of our current favorite 8-bell arrangements. We performed it for the first time at the Siskiyou Summit Handbell Conference in May this year, and again at our concert with Philadelphia Bronze.

Greensleeves is a traditional English folk song. The melody is frequently heard in the USA as the popular Christmas carol What Child Is This. If you’d like to play this piece, the music is available for purchase and download from our music site.

This video was recorded during one of our rehearsals in February – and what makes this video special for us is the appearance (just after the first minute) of a squirrel in the background.

That squirrel was a sweet little distraction throughout our rehearsal that day, and made several appearances to pose for photos!

Greensleeves for handbells

How to purchase the sheet music

If you’d like to play Greensleeves, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials.

Please also note that our music is designed as downloadable PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.

If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide, designed to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!

A tour of the Malmark Handbell Factory

We were recently in Philadelphia to perform our concert with Philadelphia Bronze – our first-ever visit to Philadelphia! This seemed like an ideal time for a tour of the Malmark handbell factory. It’s the place where our handbells were made!

The Malmark Bellcraftsmen factory is located in Plumsteadville, PA. We were strangers to the area, but still managed to get on the right road and find the place we were looking for. This big sign helped a lot:

tour of the Malmark handbell factory

Our tour started in a room full of history. We were able to see the “1st production” Malmark handbell, made in December 1974, and a selection of various handbells made many years ago and in other countries. Our tour guide, Martha, talked about the process of making the bells, starting from the design itself, where the sound and overtones are determined by the shape, diameter and wall thickness of the bell. Handbells are made of bronze; 80% copper and 20% tin. You can read about the casting process at www.malmark.com.

The smallest and largest handbells ever made!

Here’s a picture of the largest and smallest bells ever made by Malmark; the G0 and the C9.

biggest and smallest handbells by Malmark

Larry’s a bass bell specialist, and he was pleased to be allowed to try playing the G0 bell – with great care! People have observed that it sounds more like a gong than a bell.

We visited the machine shop next, and admired the obvious skill and dedication needed to operate the lathe and tune the bells in the next part of the tour. It’s precision work, and a fascinating process to watch. We have to admit that all those golden, gleaming turnings – the shavings from the bells, which sparkled all over the machinery – made us think of Christmas!

Malmark handbell factory tour

The polishing department was an exciting place! It was impressive to see the difference between the bell at the start of the process and after machine-polishing.

polishing Malmark handbells
Malmark handbell tour

So many shiny bells!

We discovered that walking into a huge room full of bells can be an awe-inspiring experience. Was Carla the first person to CRY when she saw this? We don’t know, but ohhh… so many bells! So much bronze! So much SHINY!

Handbells at the Malmark factory

Skilled and dedicated people

Something that really impressed us at the Malmark factory was the obvious skill and dedication of the people working there. It’s great to meet people who are knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the work they’re doing. They are all aware of the important part they play in the creation of the finished product. If we lived near Plumsteadville, we’d definitely want to work there!

Malmark handbell handles

We found out that bells can be “rejected” at any stage of the production process. This can even happen in the very final stages, when they’ve already gone through several stages of tuning, been polished and given their handles and clappers. Some of the rejected bells are returned to the foundry to be melted down again, while others become beautiful gifts.

Handbell gifts from Malmark

Others are not so fortunate and end up gathering dust, as makeshift doorstops.

handbells in a box

Bass handbells!

Next… those great big bass bells. Larry calls them “aluminum”, and Carla tries hard not to call them “aluminium” (there’s a subtle US/UK difference there!) . Whatever you call them, they’re large, and they start off very heavy before some of the weight has been tuned out of them. For the last few years, Larry has played these aluminum bells at the Bay View Week of Handbells, which takes place in Michigan every August. That’s where his t-shirt came from!

aluminum bass handbells

Malmark also manufactures Choirchime® instruments, which also go through a tuning process. It was unusual for us to see so many handchimes in one place!

Malmark choirchimes at the factory

We finished our tour of the Malmark factory in the Demonstration Ringing Room, where we rehearsed a few pieces for the following evening’s concert with Philadelphia Bronze.

Malmark Cymbells

If you’re ever in Pennsylvania, we’d recommend taking a tour of the Malmark factory. There’s so much to see there, and you’ll have the opportunity to meet a group of people who are really passionate about the instruments they create. Even if you don’t play handbells, it’s a fascinating place to visit. We took lots more photos, so please click on this link to see the complete set!

And no, Malmark didn’t pay us to write this!

Someone asked us if Malmark paid us to write this review of their factory tour – and the answer is no. We really did enjoy our time there!

Fear a’ Bhàta – A Long-Distance Love Song

Fear a’ Bhàta (also known as The Boatman) is a beautiful Scottish-Gaelic melody. We first saw in an old songbook published in 1927. Directed to be sung “with longing”, it tells the story of a young girl who is in love with a fisherman who has sailed away… and every night she watches the ocean, waiting for his boat to return.

“How often haunting the highest hilltop
I scan the ocean, thy sails to see
Will’t come tonight, love, will’t come tomorrow
Will’t ever come, love, to comfort me?”

A long-distance love story

The words of the song tell how her friends think she’s wrong to wait for this man, and that he’s lied to her and is unlikely to return. She wonders if he’s remembered the promises he made before he left, and sings about the silken gown and gold ring that she’s never likely to own.

We assumed until recently that the story was a heartbreaking work of fiction. But it turns out that the song was written in the late 19th century by Sìne NicFhionnlaigh (Jean Finlayson) about her own life and the struggles she endured while her fiancé was away at sea. Best of all, shortly after the song was written they got married. It’s good to know that the story ended happily, after all.

Here’s a video of our handbell arrangement of this piece, recorded at our concert with Philadelphia Bronze in King of Prussia, PA.

If you’d like to play Fear a’ Bhàta, you can purchase and download the music from Choraegus.

Information about buying handbell music from Choraegus

Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials such as concert programs.

Please note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.

If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide. We designed this guide to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.

Any questions?

If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!

Fear a Bhata - a long-distance love story

Our Concert with Philadelphia Bronze

Larry and Carla concert with Philadelphia Bronze

We were so excited to make our first trip to Philadelphia to perform in a concert as guests of Philadelphia Bronze, a group of talented handbell musicians dedicated to excellence in the art and joy of handbell ringing.

We arrived in Philadelphia in the evening of Thursday, May 28th, and had the opportunity to do some sightseeing on Friday, including a fascinating tour of the Malmark factory where our handbells were made, and a visit to the Liberty Bell. On Saturday we visited Valley Forge Park, and then spent the rest of the day meeting and rehearsing with members of Philadelphia Bronze, before the evening’s concert.

The concert took place on May 30th at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in King of Prussia, and the program was as follows, with our pieces shown in purple, and Philadelphia Bronze’s in… well, bronze-ish, perhaps:

Allegro, from Concerto in A Minor …………………. Antonio Vivaldi, arr. Larry Sue

Fear a’ Bhàta (The Boatman) ………………………… Sìne NicFhionnlaigh, arr. Larry Sue

The Butterfly ……………………………………………….. Irish slip jig, arr. Larry Sue

Fantasy on Kingsfold ……………………………………. KINGSFOLD, arr. Dean Wagner

Jazz Pizzicato ……………………………………………… Leroy Anderson, arr. Martha Lynn Thompson

Great is Thy Faithfulness ………………………………. William Runyan, arr. Larry Sue

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee ……………………….. Ludwig von Beethoven, arr. Larry Sue
(with additional organ score arr. T. Paul Rosas, performed by Ross Boerner)

Silver and Bronze …………………………………………. Larry Sue
(with Martha Alford, flute)

Elegie …………………………………………………………. Jules Massenet, arr. Karen Roth

Fountains of Light, from the “St. Francis Suite” .. Kevin McChesney
(Martha Alford, flute)

Grizzly’s Peak …………………………………………….. “Traditional” Irish-American jig, arr. Larry Sue

Greensleeves ………………………………………………. Traditional English melody, arr. Larry Sue

America, the Beautiful ………………………………….. Samuel A. Ward, arr. Larry Sue

Good Christian Men, Rejoice ………………………….Traditional, arr. Kimberlee F. Strepka

Spiritual Boogie! ………………………………………….. American spirituals, arr. Larry Sue

Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken ………………. F. J. Haydn, arr. Linda McKechnie
(Ross Boerner, organ)

Here is a video of some of the highlights of the evening:

Our sincere thanks go to all the members of Philadelphia Bronze, who made us so welcome – with particular thanks to Martha, their director. We’re also thankful to Risë and Sarah for acting as our tour guides during our trip. We enjoyed every moment of our time in PA, and hope to go back there someday!

We’re always interested in collaborating with other groups – so if you’d like to book us to perform in a concert with your musical group, contact us and let’s find out if we can make it happen!