Category Archives: Traditional and Folk Music

New Music for Handbells – America, the Beautiful

It’s Memorial Day – a day to honor the men and women who gave their lives while serving in the US Armed Forces. Here’s our latest 8-bell piece – an arrangement of America, the Beautiful.

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Would you like to play this arrangement?

If you’d like to play America, the Beautiful, 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 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!

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 – When Irish Eyes Are Smiling

We haven’t posted any new music for a while, so it must be time for us to introduce another eight-bell duet!  This one is When Irish Eyes Are Smiling – a lighthearted song first published in 1912 as a tribute to Ireland and its people.

Would you like to play this arrangement?

If you’d like to play When Irish Eyes are Smiling, the music is available for purchase and download from our music site.

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 do what we can to help!

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!

Tico Tico no Fubá – at Distinctly Bronze West

We were so excited to hear Larry’s arrangement of the Brazilian piece Tico Tico no Fubá being performed for the first time at the Distinctly Bronze West concert last Sunday. Here’s a video from one of Sunday’s rehearsal sessions in Portland.

More information about this arrangement

Tico Tico no Fubá is a truly exciting Brazilian piece written by Zequinha de Abreu. Larry’s arranged it for 5-7 octaves of handbells, with 3 octaves of handchimes. It’s Level 5+, and it’s a fun challenge for advanced handbell choirs. You’ll dance as you ring!

Alex Guebert has also created some great percussion parts for this piece – so you have the option to add guiro, maracas, cabasa, tamborim, and claves. Sheet music for the handbell and percussion parts is available for purchase and download from Choraegus. Please read our licensing agreement for full information.

If you haven’t purchased music from Choraegus before, you might like to read our step-by-step guide. We designed this guide to help you navigate the process in a stress-free way!

Any questions?

If you have any questions about buying or playing Choraegus handbell music, please read our Frequently-Asked Questions, in case the answer is there. If you don’t find the information you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.

TIco Tico no Fuba for handbells

New Music for Handbells – Grizzly’s Peak – for 8 Bells

Here’s a new piece for eight handbells, recorded at the Alzheimer’s Benefit Concert on January 23rd. This new piece has been a lot of fun to learn! Its title is Grizzly’s Peak, but there’s a more familiar tune not-so-well hidden in there.

If you’d like to play Grizzly’s Peak, it’s available for purchase from Choraegus. It’s not essential to wear a bear costume when performing the piece, but it helps. Okay, maybe it doesn’t. But you’ll still enjoy playing this piece, which your audience will surely recognize as The Bear Went Over the Mountain.

Information about buying Choraegus 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 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, designed 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!

Grizzly's Peak - for 8 handbells