The holiday season tends to start early in the handbell world. We’ve been rehearsing Christmas music with the Kalamazoo Ringers for a number of weeks now. However, we put off starting our own Christmas duet practising until after our Be Still, My Soul concert in Gregory.
The time is now here, and we’re starting to work on Christmas music. We’re getting ready for the first of our holiday performances, at the Kerstmarkt in Downtown Holland, on Friday, November 29th. This European-style market is an annual event here in Holland, and this will be our third year there. It’s always a fun and festive shopping opportunity, and a chance to enjoy delicious food and watch interesting demonstrations by local craftspeople.
We still have some limited availability for holiday handbell performances in December – so if you’d like West Michigan’s smallest handbell choir to come and play at your event, worship service or holiday party, please get in touch. If we can’t fit you into our schedule for this year, let’s plan early for 2020!
We’re thrilled to be able to share this video of Larry’s original compositionA Minor Crash, recorded at the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells concert. This piece is fun to play! You can even see some of the musicians dancing along, which is exciting to see at a handbell performance!
Rocking out to A Minor Crash!
A Minor Crash is written for 5-8 octaves of handbells and optional handchimes. An additional cajón part is available. The cajón part is written by Alex Guebert, who also plays it in the concert video. It’s a Level 4 piece, with some interesting challenges for bass handbell enthusiasts. There’s also an alternative simplified section for less-adventurous performers!
Sheet music for A Minor Crash
If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from our music site, Choraegus.
Many thanks to Pierpont Productions
Our thanks go to Pierpont Productions, who graciously allowed us to share the video from the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells concert. They make a wonderful recording of the Bay View handbell concert each year. CDs and videos of previous concerts are available. If you’d like one, contact us, and we’ll put you in touch!
Looking for something a bit unusual for your Christmas handbell performance or worship service? Here’s our latest eight-bell arrangement! It’s a sixteenth-century Flemish carol called De Drie Koningen(The Three Kings). This carol is suitable either for Epiphany or Christmas. We recorded the video last January, before we took down our Christmas tree!
“De Drie Koningen” – recorded in front of our Christmas tree!
Would you like to play this 8-bell piece?
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
If you’re new to buying our music online, we strongly recommend that you read the licensing agreement first. Please note in particular that music from Choraegus is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.
If you’re new to Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide! We designed this to help you navigate the purchasing process in a stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please look at our Frequently-Asked Questions for more assistance. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
It’s been over a week since we came back from our trip to the Petoskey area for our 10th year at the Bay View Week of Handbells. Life is getting back to normal, and we have lots of great memories from our tenth year at the event!
Bay View Week of Handbells is part of our history!
Taking part in the Bay View Week of Handbells has become a highlight of our year. We attended the event for the first time in August 2010, when we were still in our long-distance relationship. Carla flew to Chicago from England, Larry flew in from California. We met in person for the very first time, before taking the short flight to Traverse City together. Having only previously communicated in Facebook messages, it was exciting for us to spend time together in person, and to discover that we actually did like each other in “real life”, as well as online!
After another year apart, we met again at the 2011 Week of Handbells. We celebrated our engagement in Evelyn Hall at the Monday evening reception. The following year was a busy one for us as we dealt with the challenges of the U.S. fiancée visa process. Finally, we were able to close the distance in August 2012. We timed everything carefully, to coincide with that year’s Week of Handbells! Larry flew to England, then we flew back together from London to Chicago. Next, we flew to Traverse City, then drove to Bay View for the week of rehearsals and concert. After the event was over, we were able to take a flight to California and begin our life together.
With Maestro Carl Wiltse at Bay View Week of Handbells 2014
Since then, we’ve participated in the Week of Handbells every August. The event is very special to us for many reasons. For a start, the standard of musicianship is very high. Participants are required to arrive at the event fully prepared. That means we can use the rehearsal time not to learn notes, but to work on expression, playing as a single ensemble, and the finer points of preparing for a concert to a high professional standard. It’s a lot of fun to work on challenging music under the baton of an experienced and highly-skilled director. It’s also good to know that the Thursday evening’s public concert will be enjoyed by so many people! Bay View has also given us the opportunity to meet with friends, and to make new ones, as handbell musicians arrive from many different cities to take part each year.
With Bay View Director Fred Gramann at the 2019 Week of Handbells
The years have gone quickly since our first experience of the Bay View Week of Handbells! We’ve been able to learn so much from participating in the event. Larry has played the aluminum bass handbells every year since 2010. He’s appreciated being part of the “Deep Pit” team; a group of five musicians who are highly skilled at playing these bells. Carla had another opportunity to be a Position Captain this year. She was responsible for supporting a team of ringers and starting early with preparing for the event. Together they worked out solutions and strategies for tricky passages in the music.
Larry in the “Deep Pit” at Bay View
It’s been several years since we made our Big Move from California to Michigan. Now that we live in Holland, it takes us less than five hours to drive to Bay View. That’s been an advantage to us, because we’ve been able to make a few day-trips to Bay View outside of the Week of Handbells, just for the sheer joy of being there! We love being by the lake, and even going in the lake, as we hunt for Petoskey stones to bring home and polish. The Petoskey stone is the official Michigan State Stone. It’s a fossilised coral – Hexagonaria percarinata – that lived in the warm Michigan waters around 350 million years ago. Polishing Petoskey stones (using wet sandpaper) is the perfect activity for cold winter evenings at home in Holland!
Hunting for Petoskey stones!
We stayed in one of the pretty cottages on the Bay View campus again this year, and it’s wonderful to be close to the rehearsal venue. It’s fun to feel part of the Bay View community, even if it’s just for a short while. Bay View has some of the best sunsets we’ve ever seen. Besides, what other handbell event gives you the opportunity to finish a tiring day of rehearsals, and see scenes like these?
Historic Bay View cottagesThe Bay View Inn, seen from the Memorial GardenAnother beautiful Bay View sunset
The concert on Thursday evening was exciting for us this year, particularly as we were performing one of Larry’s original compositions – A Minor Crash. Pierpont Video Productions made a professional recording of the concert, so we hope to have a video to share at some point in the near future! We chatted with one of the Bay View Association members on the day after the concert. He referred to Larry as “the Crash Guy”, which made us laugh! Other highlights of the concert repertoire were: Drive, an original composition by Alex Guebert, Beach Boys Medley, arranged by Linda Boatright, and Hart Morris’s challenging arrangement of I Got Rhythm.
Saying goodbye is easier these days
We’re always sorry to have to leave Bay View when the Week of Handbells is over. However, now that we live in Michigan, the goodbyes are slightly easier. We know that we’re only a few hours away, so there’s no longer any reason for us to wait a whole year to return!
As we put away this year’s Bay View music and start focusing on our duet performances for the upcoming season, we’ll be setting our hopes on being able to return to the Week of Handbells in August 2020!
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.
