We were honored to be invited to present the 21st Annual Rietberg Concert at Third Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan. This annual concert is a tribute to the 45 years of service of Roger and Evelyn Rietberg to the music program of Third Reformed Church. This year’s concert was given in memory of Evelyn Rietberg, who changed the lives of so many children at the church.

Normally at this time of year, we’d have started rehearsing our Christmas music. However, this year we had two fall concert performances. That gave us a good reason to postpone practising most of the Christmas music and focus on other music instead. We did include just a handful of Christmas pieces in the repertoire, because handbells and Christmas go together so well. After all, Christmas is only a few weeks away!

Here’s the concert program:

Handbells, organ and flute together!

We’re grateful to Linda Strouf and Mary Van Voorst for sharing their musical talents with us at this concert. We’d made plans to play our duet arrangement of Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee with organ accompaniment. That created a small challenge, because the organ at Third Reformed is located at the rear of the sanctuary, upstairs in the balcony. Before the concert, we set up duplicate bells in the balcony. When the time came, Linda played a J.S. Bach piece to give us time to get from the front of the church, up the stairs and onto the balcony, ready to play Joyful, Joyful. The plan worked perfectly! Linda played another organ piece while we made our way back down the stairs, and to the front of the church again.

A highlight of the concert, for us, was the opportunity to play our arrangement of Ding Dong, Merrily on High, complete with piano and flute accompaniment. This was only the third time the piece has been performed, and the flute accompaniment part is so new that we haven’t published it yet! Mary Van Voorst joined us to play the flute, and Linda made her way down from the balcony to play the piano part. We also enjoyed playing a couple of recent additions to our repertoire – Go, Tell It on the Mountain and Lucerna Laudoniae. Lucerna is one of our early arrangements that we brought back after not having played it for several years!

Roger Rietberg was at the concert!

We were surprised and pleased to be introduced to Roger Rietberg, who attended the concert with his son. Afterwards, we enjoyed a reception, where we had the opportunity to chat with members of the audience. It’s always fun to talk about our bells and music! Al and Jane Osman gave us flowers (look out for Osman’s Flowers and Firs at the Downtown Holland Farmers’ Market). These were perfect for a festive-looking photo with our bells!

Thank you!

Our thanks go to everyone who helped to make this concert possible – from planning the event, all the way to staying to clean up after the reception.

What’s next?

What’s next for us? Straight into Christmas and holiday music! We’ll be Ringing in the Season at Ditto Upscale Resale on Friday, November 16th, and playing outdoors at the Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland on November 23rd and 30th.