December 28, 2025

Our 2025 holiday handbell performances

Our 2025 holiday handbell performances are finished! It’s time to thank everyone involved, and to look back at a fun December of duet-ringing!

We had busy holiday performance season this year. We were very fortunate with the weather, and the fact that we didn’t have to travel long distances to get to any of our Christmas gigs. That’s very helpful in Michigan. Our Christmas handbell performances are often booked months in advance, and there’s no way to know what the weather’s going to do! We just hope for the best, and remember to allow extra time for travel. We’ve never been late for any of our holiday handbell performances yet!

Here are some of the highlights from our 2025 holiday season:

Handbells on WOOD TV8

Our holiday performance season began early this year, with a short-notice booking for November 19th! This was for an appearance on the WOOD TV8 Daybreak show. The show was being presented live from the Christkindl Markt in Grand Rapids. Even though we wouldn’t be playing handbells while the market was open, we were invited to go and add to the holiday atmosphere with some Christmas ringing. This involved waking up at 3:30am, and arriving at the market at 5:15am on a very cold day! Still, we had fun, and we met Santa while we were there! Interestingly, the Santa we met there was not the official Christkindl Markt Santa. He was a very good one, though!

handbell ringers with Santa at Christkindl Markt Grand Rapids — *Trying not to look too cold, in Grand Rapids early in the morning*

Glad to be back indoors for a while!

After that wintry start to our holiday performances, we were thankful to be indoors for a candlelight Advent evening in Marne. This was a nice opportunity to play some of our “it’s not quite Christmas yet” pieces, although we were happy to fulfil a surprise request for Jingle Bells at the end of the evening!

Later in December, we were welcomed back to The Village at the Pines in Grand Haven, where we enjoyed sharing some Advent and Christmas handbell duets with residents. It’s always such a friendly place! Several of the residents (and a staff member) played Jingle Bells on handchimes, and did very well. We have a version that uses words instead of music notation, and that makes it easier, although a couple of the residents had played handbells before, and their experience definitely showed!

For the first time, we shared our handbell music at The Warm Friend (Resthaven) in Holland, and appreciated all the interesting questions we received from the audience. We felt as if we could have stayed all afternoon and talked about handbells with the residents there! We took extra handbells and handchimes with us to this performance, so we added a smaller percussion table to the side of our usual table. This enabled us to demonstrate Savior of the Nations, Come on lower bells than we’d usually use, and to use handchimes for a couple of our pieces too.

Holiday handbell performances - Resthaven The Warm Friend in Holland, Michigan — *A larger-than-usual set-up at The Warm Friend*

Handbells at the Kerstmarkt-Holland

We enjoyed two evenings ringing at the Kerstmarkt in downtown Holland. We’ve been playing at this European-style Christmas market for some years now, and we always love it there. This year, we were very fortunate with the weather. We had just a few flurries of gently swirling snow, but the temperature on both evenings was mild by Michigan winter standards. We were wearing multiple layers of clothing, which helped a lot too, and we were grateful for the loan of a heater from Shady Side Farm. This holiday market is always such a fun, festive event, and it turns out that Santa and Mrs Claus love handbell music too!

Santa at Kerstmarkt in downtown Holland — *So many layers of clothing, and we have a feeling Santa and Mrs Claus had the same idea!*

Another cold (but festive) evening at Otsego Hometown Christmas

Thanks to Otsego District Public Library for sponsoring our evening at Otsego Hometown Christmas! This is always a chilly event to play at, but the warmth of the welcome makes up for it, and this year we particularly loved how many children came to listen to our handbell music. They asked interesting questions too, and it was an opportunity for us to educate as well as to entertain. This is a wonderful community event, and we’re always happy to be part of it.

handbell ringers at Otsego Hometown Christmas — *Holiday handbell performances outdoors can be cold, but so much fun!*

A concert with the Zeeland Community Band

We joined our friends at the Zeeland Community Band for their concert at Freedom Village. This concert included some pieces that were familiar to us, and others that were new. We played a 15-minute prelude, then three of our own pieces in the middle of the concert, and added our handbells to three of the band’s pieces. The concert was very well attended, and was a wonderful way to share the spirit of Christmas with this retirement community in Holland. We also appreciated being able to play our recent arrangement of Ring the Bells, accompanied by the band’s director Rose Wiersma on piano. We didn’t get a video of the performance, but here’s our recording at home, so you’ll get the idea.

Another performance at the Gary Byker Memorial Library of Hudsonville

We were pleased to be invited back to the library in Hudsonville for another holiday handbell performance. This was our seventh year at this Ringing in Christmas event hosted by the Friends of the Library, and after last December’s slightly-too-exciting drive through the snow, we were thankful for much kinder weather this time! The event is always popular, and audience members appreciate homemade treats provided by the Friends, and the opportunity to ask all their burning questions about handbells! Well, we like to think they have burning questions, of course, even though they’ve probably had them all answered by now. Thanks to audience member Steve Snow for this photo of us in action!

*Deep in concentration at Hudsonville Libary’s Ringing in Christmas program. (Photo credit: Steve Snow)*

Handbells in worship during Advent

We have quite a lot of Advent hymns for just eight bells now, but it’s still rare for us to be invited to play in churches here in Michigan during the run-up to Christmas. This December, we played at three churches; one on the third Sunday of Advent, in Grand Haven, and two on Christmas Eve, in Holland and Kalamazoo.

Handbells at St Paul's UCC Grand Haven, Michigan — *Handbell duets at the Advent service at St. Paul’s UCC in Grand Haven, Michigan*

Playing in two different places made for a busy Christmas Eve and a very late night/early morning. It was worth it, though, because there’s something so special about welcoming Christmas morning with handbells, especially when candlelight is involved.

holiday handbell performances - Advent with Larry and Carla

Lots of activity on our Facebook page!

Apart from our handbell duet performances, and concerts with Kalamazoo Ringers, we also recorded and shared a lot of handbell duets on our Facebook page during the run-up to Christmas. If you didn’t catch up with us at any of our performances, we encourage you to look at Facebook and watch our videos (now called Reels). We hope you’ll enjoy continuing to celebrate Christmas with us online!

Special thanks to those who made our 2025 holiday handbell performances possible:

WOOD-TV 8
Kerstmarkt-Holland
Shady Side Farm, Holland, MI
St. Mary Catholic Church, Marne, MI
The Village at the Pines, Grand Haven, MI
Zeeland Community Band
Otsego District Public Library, MI
Zeeland Community Band
Resthaven The Warm Friend, Holland, MI
Friends of the Gary Byker Library, Hudsonville, MI
Internet Archive
St. Pauls United Church of Christ, Grand Haven, MI
Providence Church, Holland, MI
First United Methodist Church, Kalamazoo, MI
and others who booked us for private events.

We’d like to thank everyone who helped to make this holiday season bright and busy for us. If you booked us for a performance or Christmas program or wrote a review of a performance – thank you. To those who took the time to say thank you after a performance, offered us coffee, chatted with us, or wished us safe travels – thank you. If you followed our Facebook page, watched or shared any of our Christmas videos, emailed us, downloaded sheet music from our music site, or purchased a copy of The Bass Ringer’s Notebook – we appreciate you too!

holiday entertainment Michigan handbell duo Larry and Carla

To all who celebrated this holiday season, we hope you had a wonderful time. We wish you all a happy and healthy 2026!

August 15, 2025

Winter Dance, at the Bay View Week of Handbells

A note of gratitude from Larry Sue, to participants at the 2025 Bay View Week of Handbells

Last night 107 handbell musicians at the 2025 Bay View Week of Handbells performed my arrangement of Seiichi Kyoda’s Winter Dance. Maestro Fred Gramann led us in an amazing program, and it was a tremendous honor that he included this piece in the repertoire.

My gratitude goes to all of you who made this performance more than just a technical reality. There was an inescapable growing intensity throughout the music that you made. During our penultimate rehearsal, I made a video of part of Winter Dance. It was everything I could have imagined. The Thursday night concert performance was even better than that!

I put lots of dots and squiggles on the pages, and I hope they were true to Kyoda-san’s heart. You turned those dots and squiggles into a unified sound that drew our audience into the dance we were trying to imagine. I could envision the people from that small village in far northern Japan, their bonfire, and their celebration in its warmth. Thanks, from the bottom of my heart, to each of you for being part of this musical endeavor. I thank you for granting me the privilege of joining you in it. Thank you for giving our audience an experience that they can remember. Thank you for dancing (in 5/4, no less). Most of all, thank you for having fun! You all created magnificence, and I’m indebted to you all for the gift you’ve given me.

Winter Dance, arr. Larry Sue - Bay View Week of Handbells

Click here to look at Winter Dance on the Choraegus website

August 1, 2025

The Oriole Tea Room in Bay View, Michigan

The Oriole Tea Room was one of the tea rooms at Bay View, many years ago. We’ve owned this Victorian cottage since the end of 2019, and it’s no longer a tea room, although we do drink a fair amount of tea there!

*Note: not a real representation of how to drink tea*

Desperately seeking a photo or postcard of The Oriole Tea Room!

We don’t know when our cottage started being a tea room, but know that it was a tea room in the 1920s. We’ve found references to it in the Petoskey Evening News of the time. Thanks to the Bellaire Record, we also know that it was a tea room in the 1930s. It was still a tea room in the summer of 1941 too! Here’s a photo taken from Charles E. Schloff’s excellent book A Pictorial History of Bay View : Post Cards & Photographs of the Past:

The Oriole Tea Room, Bay View Michigan in 1941

Is that postcard still in existence?

We’d love to own a photo or postcard of our cottage when it was a tea room. We didn’t purchase the cottage until late 2019, so we don’t have the historical records that many of the families at Bay View have. We still hold onto the hope that we’ll find an old photo someday! We’d love to have a photo of the cottage “in the olden days”, so that we can frame it and hang it on the wall, for us and future owners to appreciate.

In the meantime, there are lots of photos of our cottage in more modern times on our Facebook page, as well as pictures of other beautiful cottages, and Bay View in general. If you have a collection of northern Michigan vintage postcards, and you recognize our cottage among your photos, please let us know!

July 29, 2025

Not-Collecting Chickens – the Complete Guide

Not-collecting chickens has become an important part of our life in the last couple of years! If you’ve ever looked at our Facebook page on a Tuesday, and wondered why on earth there are so many posts about chickens, and no posts about our handbell music, we’ll explain it here.

How the whole chicken adventure started

In October 2019, we bought our sweet little Victorian cottage at Bay View, in northern Michigan. As is usual with cottage sales at the Bay View Association, the previous owner included some furniture and other items in the sale. One of these items, left on a shelf in the kitchen, was a chicken.

*The random chicken that started it all*

This sweet chicken seemed lonely, as the only chicken in our kitchen. The top of the microwave looked vast and empty, so we bought a red chicken with white spots to go on top of it. Then that chicken clearly needed a friend. During a romantic stroll around our local HomeGoods, we saw a white chicken that looked like the perfect companion to sit on the microwave. And so it continued. Before we knew it, we had chickens in our cottage. Not a lot of chickens, but definitely some.

Actual collectors of chickens

In this world, it is well known that some people are actual collectors of chickens. Some people collect coins, stamps, hippos, porcelain dolls, owls, or other random things. Some people collect chickens. They are happy and proud to be actual collectors of chickens. They have shelves in their homes, for the chickens, and they eagerly search for chickens in antiques stores and thrift shops, to increase their collection. Some people specialize in collecting a particular kind of chicken – like ceramic chickens, for example, or chicken kitchenware.

Actual collectors of real, live chickens

Some people like to collect real, live chickens. Backyard chickens are a big thing these days, and social media is full of photos and videos of happy people with their chickens. They sit outside and watch their chickens, they collect eggs, and they post videos of their chickens doing amusing things during the day. It’s a good life, if that’s what you want to do.

It’s a slippery slope

Collecting chickens can be a slippery slope. You can find chickens everywhere. They’re in antiques stores, thrift shops and grocery stores. You find them in art galleries and gift shops, and even at farmers’ markets and museums. The chickens that are available for purchase can be very tempting. You buy one or two chickens, and yes, they’re sweet. Family members start giving you chicken-items for birthdays and Christmas, and the chickens start to pile up in your home. You put up a couple more shelves, or replace your cute little accent cabinet with a much taller cupboard that has more space inside. Before you know it, you’re renting a storage unit on the edge of town, and then you have to move into it, because the chickens have completely taken over your home, and your kids aren’t talking to you any more, out of fear that they’ll inherit them all.

*A vintage chicken wreath, seen at New Beginnings Resale in Harbor Springs, Michigan*

Why we started not-collecting chickens

We reached a point where people were starting to think that we were collecting chickens. That was understandable, because we’d shared photos of some of our chickens on social media. However, we definitely didn’t want to become actual collectors of chickens. We decided to prove that we weren’t, by taking photos of all the chickens we saw, but didn’t collect. This would be the evidence that we were officially not collecting chickens. We added the all-important hyphen, and it became known as Not-Collecting Chickens. It’s even a hashtag on Facebook now – #NotCollectingChickens. Hyphens don’t work with hashtags, of course, so you just have to remember that it’s there in secret.

How to not-collect a chicken

See a chicken as you go about your daily life. This could be a real, live chicken, or it could be some other kind of chicken. Not a food-chicken, but perhaps a carved, wooden chicken, or a metal chicken, or a ceramic chicken, a chicken mug, or a chicken on a t-shirt. You get the idea. There are not-collectable chickens everywhere.
Take a photo of the chicken. Don’t take the chicken home with you. Note that it’s helpful if you don’t pick up the chicken and start to bond with it. Admiring the cuteness is fine, but once you start to imagine where the chicken could sit in your living room, you’re running the risk of turning into an actual collector of chickens. It’s entirely up to you, but do you really need chickens?
Send the photo to us for the not-collection. You can post it on our Facebook page, or click on the message button to send it privately if you don’t want to risk other people seeing it before we do.
Congratulations! You have successfully not-collected a chicken! Now find some more!

*A beautiful not-collectable chicken, complete with underage chickens*

Why is the hyphen so important?

If you think about it, there’s a big difference between not collecting chickens, and not-collecting chickens. There are lots of people who don’t collect chickens, after all. They don’t even think about chickens. They don’t look for them in thrift stores, and they don’t yell “CHICKEN!” as they drive past one in someone’s back yard, then turn around and go back to take a photo of it. You can ask someone if they collect chickens, and they’ll reply that no, they don’t collect chickens (unless they do, of course).

The art of not-collecting chickens is a more deliberate thing. You have to take a photo of the chicken, for a start, as proof of the successful not-collection! That’s why the hyphen matters. It’s the difference between simply not collecting chickens, and actively seeking out chickens to not-collect, and not-collecting them by taking the photo without taking the chicken home.

Extreme temptation

Some chickens are very tempting. You’ll see them in the thrift stores and gift shops, and you’ll love the cuteness of them, and their sweet little head-thingies and underbeak dangly bits! They might have soft wings, or fluffy little underage chickens with them. The choice is always yours. If you are catastrophically tempted by a chicken, and you end up taking it home, don’t panic.

The photo below shows us being seriously tempted by MASSIVE RED CHRISTMAS CHICKENS in our local Tractor Supply place. We were able to not-collect these successfully, but it wasn’t easy. We were quite obsessed with these MASSIVE RED CHRISTMAS CHICKENS for a while. Are we over them now? Well, no. We still don’t have one on our porch, though. Sometimes the number on the price tag helps to make a chicken more not-collectable.

MASSIVE RED CHRISTMAS CHICKENS at the Tractor Supply place

Occasional adoption doesn’t count as collecting

There are definitely some situations where it’s okay to take a chicken home with you. There is no need for guilt at this point. Occasional adoption doesn’t count as collecting. It’s a totally different thing. There are also several other situations where taking a chicken home won’t turn you into an actual collector of chickens:

When a chicken is a gift. If someone gives you a chicken (even if they say, “I know you collect chickens!”), it’s okay to take the chicken, and it totally won’t count as collecting. It would be very rude to tell someone that you don’t want a chicken, especially as it might be a very nice chicken. Take the chicken, adopt it into your home, and send us a photo of it for our not-collection. Even if someone thinks YOU are an actual collector of chickens, WE are definitely not.
When a chicken is handmade. If you make a chicken, that definitely shouldn’t count as collecting. If you have crochet skills, or you know how to knit a chicken, it’s perfectly acceptable to create a chicken and keep it in your home. Even if you made one out of a paper plate, it still wouldn’t count as collecting if you decided to keep it.
When a chicken is handmade and is a gift. If someone gives you a chicken that they’ve made themselves, that also would not count as collecting. To be given a handmade chicken is a very special thing, and no one should ever say no-thank-you to a handmade chicken. Think of the love and time that went into creating that chicken!
When it’s an Emotional Support Chicken. We’ve probably all seen Emotional Support Chickens. They’re usually crocheted or knitted, and they look very sweet and emotionally supportive. If you have an Emotional Support Chicken, we’re pretty sure that it’s illegal for anyone to suggest that you’re an actual collector of chickens. That chicken is providing a vital service for your mental and emotional health, and that definitely doesn’t make you an actual collector of chickens!
When you inherit a chicken. Inheriting a chicken is a very special privilege. It definitely doesn’t count as collecting. Even if you inherit someone’s entire chicken collection, you can still claim it as an occasional adoption situation. Just don’t add to it. You know the risks. Storage units are expensive.
When you have struggled with temptation, and you already love the chicken. Chickens need homes. If you are overcome by temptation in the antiques store, you can purchase the chicken if you really want to, and it will just count as an occasional adoption situation. Adopt the chicken, take it to your home, and resolve to not-collect the next one you see. Repeat as many times as you need to.

*Our friend Eileen knitted a chicken (Poppy), and gave her some wingbells to play!*

Chicken Tuesday

Chicken Tuesday now has its own hashtag on Facebook! If you go to our Facebook page, and it happens to be a Tuesday, you’ll see photos of chickens, videos of chickens, news stories about chickens, and chicken crafts. Larry might even be wearing a chicken t-shirt. Best of all, Chicken Tuesday is when we share the photos of the chickens that we and our friends have not-collected in recent weeks! We have several Facebook albums filled with not-collected chickens now, and we add to the not-collection every week.

We know that some people talk about tacos on Tuesday, but that’s not a thing for us.

Chicken of the Week

On Tuesdays, if there is a particularly special chicken, that chicken will get the Chicken of the Week award! There are no prizes if your chicken is chosen to be Chicken of the Week, but it’s exciting anyway! We have to admit that chickens chosen for this special award are often handmade, by people with knitting or crochet skills. Eileen’s chicken in the photo above was a recipient of the Chicken of the Week award, for example. Here is another:

Not-chickens

If you start not-collecting chickens, you’ll see them everywhere. Sometimes you’ll even notice something that looks like a chicken, and you’ll take a photo, then you’ll realize that it wasn’t actually a chicken. It was just a vaguely chicken-shaped item, or something that looked like a chicken because of a shadow. When that happened to us a few times, we decided to make it okay to not-collect not-chickens too. After all, why waste a perfectly good chicken-ish photo? Here is an example of a not-chicken:

prickly pear cactus, not chicken — *Meijer Gardens says this is a prickly pear cactus. It’s also a not-chicken.*

Not not-collecting turkeys

Sometimes, when we’re out not-collecting chickens, we notice that there are a lot of turkeys. This happens often in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, but sometimes at other times of the year too. Larry is always very sad to find turkeys, because we’re not not-collecting turkeys.

*Poor Larry, outside Third Coast Bakery in Traverse City. We’ve never seen a chicken there.*

Thank you to everyone who’s joined in the fun!

We’re genuinely thankful to everyone who’s joined us in not-collecting chickens, and celebrating Chicken Tuesday with us each week! If you’ve shared photos of your chickens, or crocheted a chicken, or sent us pictures of chickens that you’ve managed to not-collect on your travels – thank you! We couldn’t do this without you! Well, okay, we probably could. Yes, we still would. It wouldn’t be as much fun, though!

emotional support chicken — *An Emotional Support Chicken, beautifully made by Debbie’s cousin, who has crochet skills*

July 9, 2025

Clapping Music – Steve Reich

American composer Steve Reich wrote Clapping Music in 1972. It’s a minimalist piece that uses no instruments, and is performed entirely by clapping. We’d never heard of this piece until a couple of weeks ago, when we received an email from a friend, asking if we’d learn it to play at her late husband’s memorial service in Kalamazoo. He was also our friend, of course, and we were honored to be asked to do this.

We found videos of various people and groups performing this piece, and our first thought was: “Wait. We play handbells, not percussion. Can we even do this?”. We downloaded the score, and decided to have a go, but told our friend not to put it into the order of service quite yet, just in case! We really wanted to be able to do it, though, knowing how much her husband loved the piece.

How Clapping Music is constructed

Clapping Music starts with both performers clapping a basic rhythm (a variation on an African bell pattern) in unison. One performer continues clapping that rhythm all through the piece. After a certain number of measures (twelve, in the original score), the other performer claps the same rhythm pattern, but shifts ahead by one eighth note, skipping one note or rest in the rhythm and adding it to the end, in a continuous rotating of the pattern. The “skipping ahead/rotation” process continues, until eventually the pattern has come full circle. At that point, if all has gone to plan, the two performers are clapping in unison again.

This piece proved to be an interesting challenge for us. The first decision to make was which of us would play the continuous pattern, and who would play the “skipping ahead” rhythm. We opted to have Larry keep to the original pattern, and Carla to do the changing one. Both parts have their challenges. It may seem easy for the one person who keeps the steady rhythm throughout, but there’s the potential to be distracted by the other person. It takes concentration and focus, to keep playing the same thing, emphasising only the first beat of each measure, and not to be led astray by anything else you hear!

For the second person, the challenge is in making the quick changes, especially as some measures require clapping on the first beat, and others have a sneaky rest there. The tempo must be constant, of course. If anyone speeds up or slows down, the whole thing falls apart very quickly. Yes, we’re talking from experience! We started at a slightly slower tempo than indicated on the score, and had a lot of “oops” moments as we gradually started to understand more about how to make this piece work.

Stepping (well, clapping) out of our comfort zone!

We were surprised how much physical and mental effort it takes to play this piece. The original score calls for twelve repeats of every measure, but (after checking that we wouldn’t be the first to do it) we cut that down to four repeats, and that helped a lot. We read that the performers should try to match their sound as far as possible. We probably did a better job of that at the service than in the video we made afterwards. Having worried about sweaty palms on a hot day in church, they actually seemed to help, somehow. Unfortunately, we couldn’t replicate that when we clapped the piece again in our northern Michigan cottage!

We usually play handbell duets, so this felt like something that was far outside our comfort zone. We enjoyed the challenge, though, and plan to keep working on it! It might even be an interesting addition to our concert repertoire. If you book us for a handbell duet performance and you’d like to hear it, please let us know!

Clapping Music was very well received at our friend’s memorial service. We thought we’d make a recording to share, if only to prove that we did it. We encourage you to try it too!

January 5, 2025

Christmas handbell duets in a rather different holiday season!

At the end of the 2024-25 holiday season, it’s time to look back at our December handbell performances!

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is usually our busiest time of year, as far as handbell performances go. However, this year we didn’t have as many duet bookings as usual. That turned out not to be such a bad thing; we found out at the start of the holiday season that a family member in England was in hospital, and we really needed to go over there as soon as possible. Panic set in for while, because making an emergency trip overseas in December is not an easy thing to do. We’ve never cancelled a holiday handbell performance yet, and didn’t wat to start!

We looked at our calendar, and decided that we should continue as planned with our Christmas bookings, then fly to England as soon as they were all finished. We booked flights for December 21st, and a room in a hotel not far from the hospital. Then we took a few deep breaths, and continued with our December as planned.

Two chilly performances at the Kerstmarkt-Holland

Our 2024 holiday season started in the way that’s become a tradition for us in recent years. We always love to begin our Christmas ringing at the Kerstmarkt! This is a European-style Christmas market in downtown Holland. We even met Santa there this year! It was cold on both evenings we played, and we also had snow on one evening. We always wrap up warmly, though, so we’re well prepared. We go to this event feeling extremely wide, with several layers of extra clothing on! Thanks to the Kerstmarkt organizers, particularly Osman Flowers and Firs, and Shady Side Farm, for inviting us to take part in this festive annual event.

Another outdoor performance, at Otsego Hometown Christmas

We were excited to be asked to perform at Otsego Hometown Christmas again this year. This is another chilly outdoor event (we get a lot of practice with those!), but we enjoyed sharing our music there again. There’s always a lot happening at this community event. There are trailer rides, a live Nativity, and a parade, and it’s a fun way to celebrate the holiday season. Thanks to Otsego District Library for sponsoring our performance again this year.

Back to the Gary Byker Memorial Library of Hudsonville!

We were pleased to be invited back for this annual celebration with the Friends of the Library. If we’re remembering correctly, this was our sixth year at this event! We always enjoy the opportunity to play carols and talk about our bells with an attentive and enthusiastic audience. This year, we included a couple of accompanied duets in our program. We have lots of 6- and 8-bell accompanied pieces, and we really wanted to play some of them. We decided to try using an mp3 backing track instead of an actual pianist, and it worked well.

As you can see from the photo, it was a bit of a stormy day! We were scheduled to present a handbell duet program at Paw Paw District Library that evening too. Sadly (but wisely), that event had to be postponed. The snowflakes make for a fun photo, but driving conditions were definitely less than ideal! We’ll now be performing at the library on the evening of Thursday, January 23rd instead. We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for no winter storm that day!

Finally, some indoor performances!

We were happy to be able to add our handbell music to another Christmas concert by the Zeeland Community Band. This festive community event has been a highlight of our holiday season for several years now. Here’s a rare photo of us in action!

We enjoyed a couple of performances for private events, including a luncheon for seniors in Wright Township. As December went by, we decided that we had enough time to fit in a couple of fundraising sessions at the Salvation Army Red Kettle too. We hadn’t done that in a few years! We were encouraged by how pleased people were to hear something different at our local D&W Fresh Market. It also helped that we were able to choose a location indoors. After the first few performances in December, we felt that we’d already done our fair share of outdoor ringing!

A quick trip to England

Our pre-Christmas performances in Michigan were all finished on December 20th. On the 21st, we flew to England, to meet with family in Berkshire. We took some of our handbells with us, packed in a carry-on case. We’ve travelled overseas with handbells before, but never risk putting them in our checked luggage. We spent Christmas Day at the hospital, and played carols for patients as they had their Christmas lunch. It was heartwarming to see how the hospital staff worked hard to make Christmas Day festive for patients there. In our “down time”, we enjoyed acting like tourists in the town of Reading, and admiring the old buildings there. We shared some of the photos from our trip on our Facebook page. Our week in England was over far too quickly, and it really didn’t feel like a vacation at all. There were friends and family that we didn’t have the opportunity to see, but we hope it won’t be too long before we can start planning another trip there.

Back to Michigan, for the last days of Christmas

We arrived back in Michigan, tired and a little overwhelmed from our trip. We’d been looking forward to playing at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ on Epiphany Sunday, though. We actually couldn’t remember the last time we’d played handbell duets in an Epiphany Sunday service! We were thankful for one more opportunity to play carols such as Silent Night, The First Nowell, What Child is This and We Three Kings. It was our first visit to this friendly church, but hopefully not our last!

Thank you!

Thank you so much to everyone who supported and encouraged us through our 2024-25 holiday season! If you booked us for a performance, came to one of our handbell concerts, bought music from Choraegus, communicated with us on our Facebook page, or did anything at all to lift our spirits during quite a stressful month – thank you. We’re looking forward to sharing more handbell music with you in the coming year!

March 30, 2024

Danny Boy – Bass Handbell Solo

Did you catch Larry’s recent performance of Danny Boy (also known as the Londonderry Air) on our Facebook page recently? In case you missed it, here’s the video, now available to watch on Vimeo:

Larry first performed Danny Boy as a bass handbell solo at the at the Los Altos Sub-Acute and Rehabilitation Center in California, way back in 2001. At the time, he was helping out with a young handbell choir Valley Vibrations, based at Valley Church in Cupertino. The group was performing at the rehabilitation center, and since the bass bells weren’t getting much use, Larry was able to do a “test run” of his bass solo as part of that performance.

He performed the piece again at the Handbell Musicians of America Area 12 Conference in 2004, in two locations: Ontario, CA and Honolulu, Hawaii, where David Davidson was the clinician.

Fast-forward to 2024, and after 20 years, it seemed like the right time to get this piece out again, and see if Larry was still up to the challenge of playing it.

Some of the challenges involved in this arrangement

A bass handbell solo will inevitably have its challenges! This piece uses handbells ranging from C3 to A5. The lowest bells weigh around 9 lbs each, and the first section of the piece starts with the melody played on those bells.

The first section was challenging to play, not only because of the weight of each bell, but because of the layout and spacing. You can’t be casual about picking up and putting down bass bells, because if it goes wrong, it could be disastrous. The second section requires concentration, because of the double malleting. Larry modified the layout of the bells in this piece from the way he’d done it in 2004, to add the 4-in-hand option for the final section.

The other challenge, of course, is that Larry is twenty years older than he was when he first played this bass solo! Still, after just a few weeks of practising, he managed to get to the point where he could play the whole thing (more than six minutes) from beginning to end, and that felt like quite an achievement. If you watch the video closely, you’ll even catch a few instances of Larry using the “aerial self-pass” technique to transfer a bell swiftly from one hand to another. It’s impressive-looking with the bass bells!

A few outtakes!

Needless to say, there were a few outtakes before Larry got this one right!

Would you like to play this bass handbell solo?

If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available to download from Choraegus. A piano accompaniment mp3 is also available, which can be useful if you don’t have a pianist available. It’s the same backing track Larry used in his performance.

Finally, don’t forget that The Bass Ringer’s Notebook remains one of the must-have instruction books for anyone serious about bass handbell ringing. The book is available in hard copy only, from Choraegus.

Bass Ringer's Notebook, yellow flowers — The Bass Ringer’s Notebook – available from Choraegus

January 5, 2024

Our 2023 Holiday Handbell Performances

2024 is here, and our 2023 holiday handbell performances are finished. As we pack away our carols and start thinking about what’s next, we’d like to thank everyone who helped to make December 2023 a fun month for us!

A quieter-than-usual holiday season

The 2023 holiday season was probably the quietest one we’ve had since the pandemic. We were invited to perform at several events outside Michigan, which would have been exciting. Ultimately, though, we ended up sticking with bookings in an area very local to us. Our run-up to Christmas began with a couple of outdoor performances at the Kerstmarkt in downtown Holland. We always enjoy starting our Christmas ringing at this European-style Christmas market. It’s a fun way to practice ringing for a couple of hours at a time, even in icy weather. This time we even had our photo taken with Sinterklaas! We didn’t actually manage to persuade him to do any handbell-ringing, though.

Sinterklaas and handbells at Kerstmarkt Holland

An event that was new to us in 2023 was the Otsego Hometown Christmas. This was another outdoor performance, and wow, it was cold! It was a fun community event, though, and it was very well attended. The Otsego District Library sponsored our performance at the Hometown Christmas, and we’ll be going back there in April, to give a handbell duet presentation in the library.

2023 holiday handbell performances - Handbell ringers at Otsego Hometown Christmas

Handbell duet concerts and demonstrations

Christmas 2023 marked our return to Freedom Village in Holland; the first time we’d given a performance for the residents there since 2018! We also enjoyed sharing our music with the Century Club in Holland, and for the seniors of Chester Township. We made a return to Hudsonville Library, and also to the Village at the Pines in Grand Haven. The Century Club had requested a demonstration of our 19th-century Taylor handbells from England. Last time we played for that group, our Taylor bells were over in Ireland, being restored. We enjoyed being able to play them this Christmas, because they’re so different from our usual bells. You can see them on the table in the photo below:

Another Christmas performance with the Zeeland Community Band

One of our favorite 2023 holiday handbell performances was the Zeeland Community Band Christmas concert. This band just gets bigger and better with every passing year! This year’s Christmas concert was thoroughly festive, with some really good music by the band. This was how they looked from where we were, at the side of the stage:

2023 holiday handbell performances - Zeeland Community Band Christmas

Advent and Christmas worship services

We enjoyed playing handbell duets in Advent services at Ridge Point Community Church here in Holland. It was fun to play in the service on the first Sunday of Advent, then again in the Christmas Eve services on the Saturday evening and the Sunday morning as Christmas Day approached. We always enjoy the Christmas Eve services at this church, and we approved of the purple lighting this year!

Our final Christmas event of the season was at Glenn United Methodist Church, at the very end of the year. We played a total of six 8-bell duets in that service, to a small but friendly and appreciative congregation. The pastor gave a sermon about bells and Christmas, which we really appreciated. There’s definitely something special about bells at that time of year. Yes, we may be biased, but we believe it! It’s a very special church community, in a historic building, and we appreciated the turn-of-the-century architecture there. We also loved having the opportunity to chat and have coffee with the congregation afterwards. When the service was finished, and the coffee cups were put away, we went for a nice walk around the area. If you ever get the opportunity to visit Glenn (not far from South Haven), you should!

Glenn United Methodist Church, Grand Haven

Thank you to all for your support and encouragement in 2023!

As we start our new year, and look forward to snow finally arriving in our part of Michigan (fingers crossed!), we’d like to thank everyone for your friendship and encouragement in our busy holiday season. If you booked us for a performance, thank you! If you came to one of our concerts, or chatted with us after a worship service, thank you too! To the people who made coffee or tea for us, put money into our tip jar at the Kerstmarkt, or gave us flowers; thank you. If you prayed for us, sent us a Christmas card, or wished us safe travels, we appreciate you too.

Finally, thanks to everyone who bought music from Choraegus, liked or shared videos from our Facebook page, and generally helped to keep us smiling during our busiest month of the year. We appreciate you all, and wish you good health and happiness in 2024!

2023 holiday handbell performances - Larry and Carla

August 4, 2023

Larry’s Town Crier article about the Bay View Week of Handbells

The 2023 Bay View Week of Handbells starts on Monday, August 14th! Larry recently wrote an article about the event, and an abridged version was published in the Bay View Association’s newsletter, the Town Crier.

There was a lot of information in Larry’s article, but not enough space to publish the entire thing in the Town Crier. Click on the photo of the Town Crier below to read the article in full, and enjoy finding out more about the concert on Thursday, August 17th, this year’s music repertoire, and some interesting inside information about the composers and arrangers!

Larry's Town Crier Article - Bay View Week of Handbells

See you at the concert!

Remember to mark your calendar so that you don’t miss this year’s Week of Handbells concert! As mentioned in Larry’s Town Crier article, it will take place in the John M. Hall Auditorium on Thursday, August 17th. The concert starts at 7:30pm. It’s a popular event, so be sure to arrive early to get a seat in your favorite spot!

The two of us have been participating in the Week of Handbells since 2010. As always, we’ll be posting photos from this year’s event on our Facebook page, and you’re welcome to contact us if you have any questions about the concert, or the event in general.

We look forward to seeing you on August 17th!

May 18, 2023

Our handbell performance in Decatur

It’s been a while since we played handbell duets for an audience; in fact, we haven’t done that since February! Our handbell duet performance in Decatur gave us a chance to visit a new place, and to meet the friendly women of First Presbyterian Church. What a warm welcome they gave us!

The event was a Mother’s Day tea, and we played a variety of hymns and traditional melodies for an enthusiastic and appreciative audience in this small sanctuary. It was an ideal performance space for a small handbell ensemble, and the sound carried surprisingly well, even without amplification.

The 8-bell arrangements we played included Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee, Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Greensleeves/What Child Is This, Amazing Grace, Lucerna Laudoniae, To God Be the Glory, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise, The Gift of Love (The Water is Wide), and Sakura. We also played our fun arrangement of Chopsticks, and demonstrated our handchimes by using them to play Ma Navu.

All the above arrangements are available to purchase from our music site, Choraegus.

During our handbell performance, we gave the audience the opportunity to ask questions. They came up with some interesting ones! We talked about how we met, how often we rehearse, and about Larry’s experience with ringing bass handbells. We also talked about the Kalamazoo Ringers concert coming up on May 21st in Kalamazoo, and encouraged people to go along and see bass chimes taller than Larry!

After the performance, we all went downstairs and enjoyed a reception with coffee and cookies. We received a kind gift of a little glass rooster and some lovely flowers to take home with us.

Our thanks go to the women of First Presbyterian Church for inviting us to give this handbell performance in Decatur. We hope to be back to see you all again someday!