Category Archives: Church Music

A Handbell Concert with Philadelphia Bronze!

Exciting news!  We’ve been invited to Pennsylvania at the end of this month, to perform in concert with Philadelphia Bronze!

Philadelphia Bronze concert

This will be our first-ever trip to the Philadelphia area, which looks like an interesting place to visit! We’ll only be there for three days, but we’re already busy making plans for the trip. We’ll definitely include a visit to Malmark Bellcraftsmen, the manufacturers of the bells we use for playing our duets.

More information about the concert

The concert with Philadelphia Bronze will take place on Saturday, May 30th, 2015 at 7:00pm. It will be at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 132 E. Valley Forge Road, King of Prussia, PA 19406. We’ll perform some brand-new and unpublished duets in this concert. We’ll also share a new piece written by Larry for eight handbells and flute. We’re looking forward to hearing some exciting music from Philadelphia Bronze too!

On Sunday, May 31st, we’ll play some of our duets during the morning worship service at Newtown United Methodist Church. Then we’ll fly back to California later that day.

We’ll be posting more information about our trip on our Facebook page in the coming week. You can find Philadelphia Bronze on Facebook too!

A Concert With No Audience – in Walnut Grove

Last weekend, we saw the opportunity for another Concert with No Audience in Walnut Grove, California. We set up by the side doors of the Presbyterian church there, and played for an hour or so. There was no audience except the passing traffic, the birds, and a couple of passers-by.

We enjoy giving these “concerts” from time to time. In reality, a concert with no audience is probably not much more than another rehearsal. What makes it different is the possibility that an audience might arrive without warning. When we rehearse, we go back and practise passages of the music that need improvement. When we give a concert, whether to an audience or not, we’re selecting pieces that are performance-ready, and playing them to the best of our ability.

Here’s a video with excerpts from some of the pieces we played, all of which are currently available (or soon to be available) from Choraegus.

Would you like to host a concert – with an audience?

If you’d like to book us to perform a concert at your church, or a performance for your event, please contact us. We’ll bring the music, and you can provide the audience!

Concert with No Audience - Choraegus
Choraegus – Bringing Music to the People

New Music for Handbells – In the Garden – for 8 Bells

In the Garden was written in 1912 by C. Austin Miles. We received a request for an eight-bell arrangement of this much-loved hymn – so here it is!

How to purchase the sheet music

If you’d like to play In the Garden, 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 be happy to help!

In the Garden - handbells

Did We Manage a Weekend Vacation Without Handbells?

Taking a vacation without handbells is clearly a challenge! We spent a lovely long weekend visiting Yosemite National Park. The plan was to enjoy a few days in beautiful surroundings, without the pressure of rehearsals or concerts. That’s quite unusual for us, because we usually only stay away from home when we’re attending a handbell event.

But did we leave our handbells at home?

Well, no. We still took our handbells with us. After all, there was always the possibility we might decide to rehearse in the hotel! Or we might be driving past a wedding and be called upon to play duets. We might even get a sudden phone call asking us to play at a church service. Oh, who are we kidding? It just didn’t seem right to go away for a long weekend without taking the bells with us. Perhaps it is an addiction after all.

We left the bells in the hotel for three whole days without taking them out of the case. But on Sunday morning, we could ignore them no longer, and we decided to find somewhere to rehearse. Just moments away from our hotel in Oakhurst was the Little Church on the Hill – the perfect location!

Vacation without handbells - Little Church on the Hill

Sadly, it turned out not to be such a perfect location, because we were competing with lots of traffic noise – but still, we spent an hour or so playing through some of the music we haven’t played for a while, and we had a great time. Here are some excerpts of the pieces we played:

The idea of a vacation without handbells was nice while it lasted, but turned out to be an impossible goal for us. We hope to be able to play at the Little Church again someday – maybe on our next trip to Yosemite!

Music for Twelve Bells – a Whole New Adventure!

Over the past couple of years, we’ve had a lot of fun writing and performing our eight-bell music. We’ve recently published some fun and exciting music for twelve bells – a whole new adventure for us!

Getting some help with playing the new music

We wanted to make demonstration videos of the new 12-bell pieces. Of course, the problem with 12-bell music is that we can’t play it by ourselves. So we thought for a while, and decided to ask someone to help us:

“Hi, J.C. Are you free on Saturday? Want to come and help us with some bell stuff?”

“Okay. Uh… what kind of bell stuff?”

“Well, we need to try and record as many of the new twelve-bell pieces as we can manage… in not-very-much time.”

J.C. is more of a bass bell expert, and he doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to do 4-in-hand treble ringing, so we weren’t sure if he’d be too enthusiastic about our suggestion. But he’s a skilled musician, and he was up for the challenge. We met at the rehearsal venue, and the three of us spent an hour or so playing through our new twelve-bell music, to see how it worked “in real life”. We recorded our rehearsal, in the hope that we’d be able to get some demonstration videos for the website.

The videos we made are below. It should be noted that these are all first, second or third takes, so the pieces are not necessarily played 100% accurately. There are occasional wrong notes, and some inaccurate rhythms and occasional slip-ups of a random nature! But for a first read-through, we were quite pleased with how it all went. We felt that we’d only need a few more practice sessions to add a bit more polish to each performance.

Here are the rehearsal videos. Click on the titles if you’d like to buy the music!

All Creatures of Our God and King

All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name

Annie Laurie

Barcarolle

Greensleeves/What Child Is This?

Holy is the Lord

We Gather Together / We Praise Thee, O God, Our Redeemer

Our thanks go to J.C. for helping us with this at short notice. J.C. – you’re a star, and we enjoyed working with you. We hope we can do it again soon!

Photos and Videos from the 34th Annual SECC Handbell Festival

The SECC Handbell Festival was a great success. More than a hundred skilled young handbell musicians attended, and worked very hard to prepare for the concert. Larry had the privilege of being their clinician for the event.

We were both so impressed by the skill and dedication of the young musicians at this event. The choirs arrived well-prepared, and stayed focused throughout the rehearsals. Their individual performances were of a very high standard, and they performed the massed ringing pieces very well. If you’d like to see some of the highlights from the SECC Handbell Festival, here’s a video with excerpts from the rehearsals and the evening concert. The concert featured music by Arnold Sherman, Kevin McChesney, William Gross, Jason Krug, Linda McKechnie, Tim Waugh, Michael Glasgow, Catherine McMichael, Matthew Compton and our very own Larry Sue. A snippet from our performance of our eight-bell duet “Great is Thy Faithfulness” appears about 18 minutes into the video.

We also very much enjoyed this performance of Matthew Compton’s arrangement of “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?”, by Bellissimo, a group from Redlands Advent Academy. Here’s a video from the event:

If you’d like to see more photos from this event, you can find them on our Facebook page!

Handbell duo Larry and Carla Sue at the 34th Annual SECC Handbell Festival, Riverside, CA
34th Annual SECC Handbell Festival, Riverside, CA – 2015

Southeastern Conference Advanced Handbell Festival

We’re excited that Larry has been invited to be the clinician at the SECC Advanced Handbell Festival this year!

We’re looking forward to making a trip to Riverside for this one-day event. Larry will be leading rehearsals with advanced young handbell musicians, and preparing for an evening concert. The handbell choirs will work on massed-ringing pieces to perform as a group, and will also prepare individual performance pieces. We’ll be playing an 8-bell duet or two during the concert too!

We’re looking forward to our visit to Riverside, and hope to do some sightseeing after the Advanced Handbell Festival. We’re also making tentative plans to play handbell duets in a church service on the Sunday morning. We’ll give you more details about this as they become available. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for updates!

If you’re in the area, you might like to join us on Friday, March 13, for the evening concert at La Sierra University’s Alumni Pavilion. There should be some exciting music to listen to, performed by some of the area’s finest young handbell musicians. Find out more information from the SECC Office of information, or contact us if you have any questions we might be able to help with.

Advanced Handbell Festival 2015

New Music for Handbells – Our first “Surprisingly Easy” Hymn Collection

Introducing our first Surprisingly Easy™ Eight-Bell Hymn Collection! 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, or your handbell choir is enthusiastic but small in number, these hymns could be what you’re looking for!

What’s included in this first collection?

  • A Mighty Fortress Is Our God
  • Fairest Lord Jesus
  • Hyfrydol (also frequently sung as Alleluia! Sing to Jesus)
  • I Need Thee Every Hour
  • Take the Name of Jesus With You
  • Take My Life and Let It Be (Messiah tune)
  • This is My Father’s World
  • To God Be the Glory

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

More information about buying music from Choraegus

Purchasing this collection 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, so 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!

Handbell music binder covers

New Music for Handbells – Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley – 8 Bells

Here’s our latest eight-bell piece – the folk hymn Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley. This sensitive and easy-to-learn arrangement is particularly suitable for Lent and Holy Week, but could be used throughout the year. Playable as a duet, trio or quartet, we hope you’ll add it to your repertoire!

Where to get the music, and more information about Choraegus

The sheet music for Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley is available for purchase and download 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, so 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 be happy to help!

Jesus Walked this Lonesome Valley - handbells

New Music for Handbells – The Love of God – for 8 Bells

Here’s our latest eight-bell piece. It’s a hymn called The Love of God, which has become one of our favorites in recent months. We started learning it while we were raising money for the Salvation Army at the Red Kettle in our local supermarket before Christmas. It was fairly easy to hide it among the Christmas and holiday music. There was a back-up plan that if anyone asked us what it was called, we’d tell them it’s also known as On Christmas Morn.

We also played The Love of God during a church service in Redding a couple of weekends ago. We think this piece could work nicely for a trio or quartet as well.

The Love of God is available for purchase and download from our music site.

More information about Choraegus handbell music

Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell ensemble – 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 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 to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.

Any questions for us?

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’re looking for, and we’ll do what we can to help!

The Love of God