Today is the first day of the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells! We’ll be spending the next four days playing some beautiful, exciting and challenging music at the John M. Hall Auditorium in Bay View, Petoskey. More than a hundred handbell musicians will rehearse there together this week, under the direction of Fred Gramann.
You can find out more about this event, and why it will always hold a special place in our hearts, by reading our article about the Bay View Week of Handbells and taking a look at our gallery of photos. This year will be our 10th year at the Week of Handbells!
Treble sectional rehearsal at the 2018 Bay View Week of Handbells
At the end of this week’s rehearsals, there will be a concert. It’s open to the public and free to attend. The concert will be held on Thursday, August 15th, 2019 at 7:30pm in the John M. Hall Auditorium, 1715 Encampment Ave., Petoskey, Michigan. An offering will be taken to benefit the Bay View Association Music Scholarship Fund.
We’re excited to be performing one of Larry’s original compositions this year!
This year’s concert repertoire:
Acclamation in G Minor by Karen Thompson
Through the Walk of Life by Matthew Compton
Songs in the Night by Sondra Tucker
A Glorious Everlasting Hallelujah Raise by Fred Gramann
We enjoyed the opportunity to share our handbell music with guests at the recent Great Lakes Regional Convention of the AGO. We demonstrated our duets at a reception hosted by Third Reformed Church here in Holland.
Information about The Bass Ringer’s Notebook and music from Choraegus
For anyone who came to the presentation for the American Guild of Organists (or missed it!), we thought it might be helpful to share some information here.
Handbell performances and workshops
Several people talked with us about our availability for duet performances. We can also work with individuals and church handbell choirs, either by attending a rehearsal, or leading a workshop session. We can help your ringers improve their basic technique or learn more advanced treble or bass skills. If you’re interested in booking us, please contact us and let us know the type of performance or workshop you’re interested in, your location, and when you’d like the performance to happen.
You can find more information about performances, workshops and our fees in the Book Us section of this website.
At Los Altos Lutheran Church, California, May 2019 (Photo: Carl S. Gutekunst)
For beginning or less-experienced groups, and also for quartets, we recommend our Surprisingly Easy eight-bell pieces. Our 8-bell music can also be useful for small groups of ringers who want an extra challenge. It can work well for small groups who want to continue ringing through the summer when the choir is taking a break.
Music from Choraegus will come to you as a digital download; a PDF file with permission to make a certain number of copies for your group. You can find more information and all the “small print” in the licensing agreement, and we also recommend our step-by-step guide!
If you’d like to try our 8-bell music before you spend any money, you might like to check out some of our free arrangements. Also available for free are the binder cover sheets for our music, as shown on the music binders on display at the reception.
Immortal, Invisible, God Only WiseThe Bass Ringer’s Notebook – available now!
Information about Larry’s book on bass ringing
Larry’s book – The Bass Ringer’s Notebook – is available from Choraegus. This is not a digital download; it’s an actual book. We will lovingly package up a copy and send to you by mail when you’ve made your purchase.
Any questions?
Our thanks go to everyone who came to the reception at the Great Lakes Regional Convention of the AGO. Thanks to everyone who asked questions, and listened to our performance. Thanks also to the members of Third Reformed Church for their generous hospitality. If there’s anything we forgot to mention here, or you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, and we’ll be happy to help!
Where have the last few weeks gone? We’re only just getting around to writing about our trip to California for the Bay Area Spring Ring!
We visited the San Francisco Bay Area to take part in the Bay Area Spring Ring, an annual event that takes place in Cupertino. In the days before we moved from California to Michigan, Spring Ring was an annual event for us, so we appreciated the opportunity to go back there this year.
This year’s Spring Ring
We flew out of Grand Rapids on the morning of Friday, May 3rd, and arrived in San Jose mid-afternoon. We picked up our rental car there, and drove to Mountain View. This is where we lived until the summer of 2016! We were excited to drive and walk around the city and see the change in the scenery since that time. There’s now a huge apartment complex that towers over the small apartment where we used to live! We had lunch in Mountain View, and marvelled at the sunshine and the lack of humidity in the air. It had clearly been too long since we’d been in the Bay Area!
We arrived in Cupertino and checked into our hotel before rushing off to the first rehearsal at Spring Ring. It was a three-hour Intense Ring rehearsal, directed by guest clinician Nick Hansen. The rehearsal finished at 10:00pm, and our brains and bodies were still convinced it was 1:00am. However, lots of work had been done, and the music was really taking shape.
After a good sleep at the hotel, we returned to Valley Church the following morning for Saturday’s Spring Ring event. It was so much fun to catch up with some of our friends we hadn’t seen for several years! We taught classes on bass handbells and British-style four-in-hand ringing. We also performed a short lunchtime concert of 8-bell duets for the event participants.
Gwerzy – still (and perhaps forever) a work-in-progress!
Spring Ring ended with a public concert, where we played our 8-bell arrangement of To God Be the Glory. We also enjoyed performances from Velocity, Bay Bells and Tintabulations, as well as the massed choirs. The Intense Ring choir played H. Dean Wagner’s arrangement Fantasy on Kingsfold and Nick Hansen’s fun arrangement of And All That Jazz. After a fun and exhausting day, this photo pretty much sums up how we felt:
Larry took a nap during the rehearsal for the final concert!
Sunday morning’s adventures
We started our Sunday with a return visit to Los Altos Lutheran Church, where we played some duets in the morning service. This church (and the Rejoicing Ringers) are very close to our hearts. We played there when we lived in the Bay Area and had the opportunity to work with their handbell choir on several occasions. It was wonderful to return to this church to see our friends there again, and we appreciated the warm welcome we received.
At Los Altos Lutheran Church (Photos: Carl S. Gutekunst)
Our handbell duet concert – All the Way from Holland
Our duet concert was scheduled for 3:00pm at Los Altos Lutheran. We spent so much time chatting with friends after the morning service that we didn’t actually go anywhere else before the concert. Jet-lag was beginning to set in, so we took a quick nap before the audience started to arrive!
It was exciting to see more of our Bay Area friends, and we appreciated that so many people made the effort to come along and listen to our musical offering. The annual Tulip Time festival was taking place in Holland at the time, so we decided to introduce the Bay Area audience to a few traditional Dutch tunes in our afternoon program. We also played some of our favorite hymns and traditional melodies. Here’s Calliope House, our soon-to-be-published eight-bell arrangement of a catchy jig written by Dave Richardson:
Vacation time!
After our handbell events were over, we were able to spend the next couple of days enjoying some vacation time! We visited some of the places we’d always enjoyed when we lived in the Bay Area, including the ruggedly-beautiful coastline at Point Lobos State Park.
Point Lobos State Natural ReserveSibling rivalry? Goslings at Point Lobos
Not surprisingly, there is a distinct shortage of sea lions on the shores of Lake Michigan. We were determined to make time to go to Santa Cruz, walk along the wharf, and get close to some of the sea lions there. It was always one of our favourite things to do when we lived in the Bay Area.
If Larry were a sea lion
During our two days doing tourist stuff in California, we also found time to visit Monterey, Carmel (briefly), Pigeon Point, and Half Moon Bay. Poplar Beach is a great place for a nice walk on a windy day, and a chance to search for sea glass too! We enjoyed reminiscing about our years together in California. We have no regrets about moving away, but sincerely hope it won’t be another three years before we can return for another visit. The Bay Area was where Larry was born, of course. It’s also where we started our life together as a married couple, so it will always have a special place in our hearts.
Together at Poplar Beach, Half Moon Bay
So many thanks to give!
Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who helped make this trip possible for us. Thanks to Handbell Ventures for their generous support – inviting us to be part of this year’s Bay Area Spring Ring, arranging for our travel and accommodation, and finding a location for our Sunday concert. Handbell Ventures is dedicated to promoting the education and enjoyment of handbells in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and you can find out more by visiting their website.
Our love and thanks also go to all at Los Altos Lutheran Church, especially to the Rejoicing Ringers and their director Lynda Alexander, for all their help in hosting our Sunday afternoon concert and providing a wonderful reception afterwards. We’re grateful to Carl and Randy for taking photos and videos of our performances, and to our friends Carol and Bill for welcoming us into their home. Thanks to everyone who came to our concert and helped to support and encourage us. We hope to be back in the Bay Area again soon!
Gaudete! (meaning “Rejoice!”) is a sacred Christmas carol, first published in 1581 in Piae Cantiones, a collection of Finnish/Swedish sacred songs. Choraegus is pleased to present this new Level 4+ arrangement by Larry Sue.
The piece is for 3-8 octaves of handbells, with optional handchimes. It’s a lively arrangement that we hope your handbell choir will have fun playing! A cajón accompaniment is also available.
Where to get the music for Gaudete!
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from our music site, Choraegus. For just $25 (plus $5 for the cajón part), you can print up to 15 copies, so you only need to pay once for your whole choir. Don’t pay for more copies than you need!
If you’re buying music from Choraegus for the first time, please read the Licensing Agreement before you make your purchase. We also recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this guide to help make the purchase and download process stress-free!
Please note that our music is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer; no more waiting for music to arrive in the mail!
Any questions?
If you have any questions, you’re always welcome to contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.
Spring has arrived! Here in Holland, Michigan we must admit that we’re sorry to say goodbye to those snowy winter days. However, we’re looking forward to our city’s annual Tulip Time festival in May!
To put us in the mood for spring, our latest 12-bell arrangement is the popular hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. This hymn is sung to several different tunes, and the one in our arrangement is the seventeenth-century English melody ROYAL OAK.
Sight-reading on video!
Our thanks go to J.C. for being willing to help us play through some of our recent 12-bell titles during his recent visit to Michigan. We recorded this video on our first read-through, so absolutely no rehearsal went into this, but you’ll get the idea.
Playing this arrangement
As with all our 12-bell pieces, this arrangement is available in two versions. We played C5 to G6 in our video, but there’s also a version for F5 to C7.
If you’d like to play All Things Bright and Beautiful, you can purchase, download and print the sheet music from Choraegus. You need only pay once, and print out up to 6 copies of this 12-bell piece for your handbell choir.
If you haven’t bought music from us before, we’d recommend that you take a look at the licensing agreement and our step-by-step guide. We designed the guide to help you purchase and download our music in a stress-free way!
Looking for music for a full handbell choir?
If you look on the Choraegus site, you’ll also find our arrangement of All Things Bright and Beautiful for 3-5 octave handbell choir.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please check our frequently-asked questions first. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
Tulips in Holland, Michigan – bright and beautiful!
Country Gardens is a traditional English folk melody and a popular Morris Dance tune. It was first published in 1728. Cecil Sharp collected it and passed it on to Percy Grainger. Grainger then arranged it for piano in 1918. It became one of Grainger’s best-known works and brought him great success.
The song was given the title English Country Garden by Jimmie Rodgers, who sung it in 1962 with the lyrics shown below:
“How many kinds of sweet flowers grow in an English country garden? We’ll tell you now of some that we know; those we miss you’ll surely pardon Daffodils, heart’s ease and flox, meadowsweet and lady smocks Gentain, lupine and tall hollyhocks, Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, blue forget-me-nots In an English country garden”
There are alternative, less flowery, words too. As children in England, Carla and her friends used to sing:
“What do you do if you can’t find a loo, in an English country garden? Pull down your pants and exterminate the ants, in an English country garden”
Our third attempt – not perfect, but improving!
We had fun playing through this new arrangement for 12 handbells. Our thanks go to J.C. for helping us out during his short visit to Michigan. The video was only our third attempt at the piece, and we hadn’t quite mastered the middle section. However, with a bit more rehearsal time, this piece shouldn’t be too challenging.
Would you like to play Country Gardens?
If you’d like to play Country Gardens, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
Larry’s been writing a lot of new music in recent weeks, as he continues his recovery from surgery. His son J.C. recently came to visit (currently studying in Alabama). We enjoyed an opportunity to play through a few of the new 12-bell titles. The first to be available from Choraegus is the African-American spiritual Give Me Jesus.
New 12-bell music – Give Me Jesus
This piece proved not to be too difficult for the three of us to play, and would also work for six people with two bells each, of course. The video was recorded on only our third attempt at playing the piece – so it’s not perfect, but you’ll get a good idea of how it sounds. We’re playing the C5 to G6 version, but (as with all our 12-bell pieces) it’s also available for F5 to C7.
Would you like to play Give Me Jesus?
If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. If you’re new to buying Choraegus handbell music, we recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this to keep the buying process as stress-free as possible!
In the last few weeks since his prostate cancer surgery, Larry hasn’t been sitting around idly doing nothing; well, not all the time, anyway. He’s been writing more handbell music!
He managed to sprain his ankle during a brief walk outside on an icy day, which didn’t do much to speed up his recovery. For that reason, we’ve been been getting through more seasons of Netflix shows than at any time in our history. Still, Larry has also been attending physical therapy sessions and doing as much exercise as his ankle will allow. In a few days’ time he’ll be going to his six-week post-surgery appointment. We hope the current restrictions on lifting (as in, certain handbells) will be removed. That would mean we could get back to some kind of a rehearsal schedule for our duets!
What’s Larry been writing?
Anyway, Larry’s not the kind of person who wants to spend lots of time in front of the TV, so he’s also been working on some new handbell music. There are a couple of new eight-bell arrangements, which we’ll be hoping to record and publish in the coming weeks, as well as several original compositions for full handbell choir. Click on any of the titles below for more information, as well as previews of the scores, and mp3s.
Handbell arrangements from the Living Water Project
Between 1989 and 2003, Larry directed a choir in California, and from there came the Living Water Composition Project. Larry’s recent exciting project has been to look back at some of these original choral songs and find some that might be reworked as handbell pieces! So far, we have the following new titles:
Home at Last The first of the LWCP pieces to be arranged for handbells, this is a Level 4+ piece for 5-8 octaves.
Emmaus This is the handbell/handchime version of the Living Water song about Jesus meeting two disciples on the Emmaus road. It’s a Level 4 arrangement for 5-7 octaves of bells and 3 octaves of handchimes.
You Must Trust This is a minor-key jazz piece that’s going to be fun to play! It’s Level 4, arranged for 5-7 octaves of handbells with percussion.
New hymn arrangements for handbells
Several hymn arrangements have been published in the last couple of weeks, with more to follow soon:
Jesus Shall Reign This new arrangement of the popular hymn has some different touches that will challenge your ringers. It’s Level 4, for 5-7 octaves of handbells.
Come Down, O Love Divine This beautiful hymn tune (DOWN AMPNEY) was written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. This new arrangement is Level 3-, scored for 3 or 5 octaves of handbells and 3 octaves of handchimes.
The Lord is My Shepherd This is an arrangement of the hymn tune POLAND. It was commissioned by our friend Caroline Harnly in honor of her mother. Caroline directs the San Francisco State University Handbell Choir. It’s a Level 3 arrangement for 4-5 octaves of handbells and 2 octaves of handchimes.
Give Me Jesus This new 12-bell arrangement is available in two versions; one for bells from C5 to G6 and the other for F5 to C7.
And now for something completely different…
Yes, We Have No Bananas For the adventurous bucket-slingers among you, this is a Low Ding Zone arrangement of the popular song by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn. It’s arranged for 7 less-than-sane bass ringers. This piece was originally written in 1923, so it entered the public domain this year, and we can now offer it for sale! You’ll need bells from G2 to D5, and chimes from Bb2 to C5, plus a shaker or other rhythm toy.
All of these new titles are available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. If you’re buying our music online for the first time, we’d recommend that you read the Licensing Agreement and our step-by-step guide before making your purchase.
Any questions?
If you have any questions, try looking at the Frequently Asked Questions first. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.
Finally… thank you!
Thank you to everyone who’s been buying music from us. There’s so much great handbell music available these days, from so many places, so we truly appreciate your support!
Larry’s latest 2-3 octave handbell arrangement is the traditional Scottish tune Kelvingrove. This popular traditional melody was first published in The Harp of Kenfrewshire, a collection of songs published in Scotland around 1820. The author’s name is given as John Sim.
“Let us haste to Kelvin Grove, bonnie lassie, O, Through its mazes let us rove, bonnie lassie, O: Where the rose in all her pride, Paints the hollow dingle side, Where the midnight fairies glide, bonnie lassie, O.”
Kelvingrove as church music
In recent years, the Kelvingrove tune has become popular in churches, with the title Will You Come and Follow Me? (The Summons) and lyrics written in 1987 by John L. Bell and Graham A. Maule. Here’s a video by the Carillon Choir at Third Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan:
Would you like to play Kelvingrove?
This arrangement of Kelvingrove is for 2-3 octaves of handbells. If you’d like to play it, the sheet music is available to purchase from Choraegus.
If you haven’t purchased music from Choraegus before, we recommend reading our step-by-step guide. We designed this in an attempt to make the purchasing process as stress-free as possible!
Please note that Choraegus handbell music will come to you as a digital download; a PDF file. You’ll be responsible for printing your own sheet music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. The advantage of having downloadable sheet music is not having to wait to receive it. You can make your purchase, print out the music, and be ready to start rehearsing with your handbell choir! For 2-3 octave handbell music, your purchase (pay once only) entitles you to print and maintain up to 15 copies for your group.
Any questions?
Please let us know if you have any questions, and we’ll be happy to help!
We’re coming to the end of our exciting holiday season of Christmas handbell performances. This was our busiest season yet, and we’d like to thank everyone who helped to make the last few weeks so much fun!
Our Christmas started early this year, with a Holiday Open House event. We enjoyed playing handbell duets at Ditto Upscale Resale, here in Holland. It was a great way to welcome the season. It was also good to check that we still had the stamina to play for three hours at a time without collapsing. It’s a useful skill when we play our duets at the Salvation Army Red Kettle!
Christmas handbell duets at the Ditto Upscale Resale Holiday Open House
We continued our season with performances at several church events. These included a Christmas By Candlelight event in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and our first visit to Cultivate Community Church in Hamilton.
We’ve very much enjoyed being part of the arts community here in Holland. It’s been fun to share our music at community events such as the Kerstmarkt. This is an annual European-style Christmas market in downtown Holland. When Carla lived in England, a highlight of Christmas was being able to visit traditional markets in London, Bath and Lincoln. Even though the market here in Holland is on a much smaller scale, the atmosphere is the same. The chilly weather also makes it extra festive! Our bells survived the cold, and we managed to play for several hours on a Saturday morning and Friday evening. Here’s a video of one of the pieces we played there:
If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available from Choraegus!
Back to the Van Andel Institute
This year we played Christmas music for residents and their guests at several senior living communities and care home Christmas parties. It’s always fun to share our Christmas music with appreciative audiences of all ages. We were excited to make another visit to the Van Andel Institute, to welcome guests to their employees’ holiday party. The Van Andel Institute definitely gets the prize for the most-impressive Christmas tree!
Larry at the 2018 Van Andel Institute Employees’ Holiday Party
We were happy to continue our collaboration with the Zeeland Community Band, joining with them for their popular annual Christmas concert.
The Zeeland Community Band, directed by Rose Wiersma – Christmas Concert Carla at the Zeeland Community Band Christmas Concert
Special thanks go to:
Ditto Upscale Resale, Holland, MI The Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland, MI Friendship Christian Reformed Church, Byron Center, MI Century Club of Holland, MI Hope College Academy of Senior Professionals (HASP) P.E.O. Sisterhood of Holland, MI Spring Valley Church, Kalamazoo, MI Van Andel Institute, Grand Rapids, MI First Presbyterian Church of Holland, MI Cultivate Community Church, Hamilton, MI D&W Fresh Market, Holland, MI The Salvation Army of Holland, MI The Village of Heather Hills, Grand Rapids, MI Zeeland Community Band Freedom Village of Holland, MI Resthaven Care Center, Holland, MI Friends of the Gary Byker Library, Hudsonville, MI Resthaven Maple Woods, Holland, MI Grandville Ladies’ Literary Club, Grandville, MI Kentwood Women’s Club, Kentwood, MI Third Reformed Church of Holland, MI
Thanks to everyone who helped to make this such an exciting holiday season for us. If you’d like to book us for your event in the coming year, please let us know!
Christmas by Candlelight at Spring Valley Church, Kalamazoo
