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.
The Bass Ringer’s Notebook – available from Choraegus
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.
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.
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:
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!
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!
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!
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.
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!
Today is Larry’s birthday! Thank you to everyone who took the time to wish him a happy day on our Facebook page today. We decided to celebrate with a new arrangement of Happy Birthday – for handbells!
More about Happy Birthday – for handbells
Happy Birthday is our gift to you, completely free of charge. You’ll find it in the Freebies section of our music site. There’s also free music for an 8-bell version of Happy Birthday, arrangements of the Doxology, Dona Nobis Pacem, Auld Lang Syne and several other pieces.
There’s no obligation to make any other purchase from Choraegus to get the free handbell music. Of course, we hope you’ll take a look at other titles we have to offer, but if you want to grab the free music and go, we don’t mind at all. It’s a good way to try our music without having to spend any money! We’re hoping this music will prove to be a useful addition to your group’s repertoire.
Instructions for downloading the free handbell music
To get your free sheet music, add it to your cart on the Choraegus site, and click on the yellow “Check out with PayPal” button. Enter your details, and click “Confirm Order” (there’s no need to click on the PayPal button a second time). Then check your email inbox. If the download link doesn’t arrive, check your spam folder, and it might be there.
As always, we recommend that you read the licensing agreement before buying music from us (or claiming your free music), especially if this is your first time downloading music from Choraegus. You won’t receive anything in the mail, and will be responsible for printing your own music.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll do what we can to help!
Larry – celebrating having made it through another year!
The new year has been here a while now; it’s hard to believe that we’re already well on the way to February. The holiday decorations in our home are still up, including two Christmas trees. We’re obviously easing our way into 2023 rather slowly! The snow has finally returned to West Michigan, and we’re enjoying it!
This is Carla here, by the way, in case you hadn’t realised that. Larry takes care of our Choraegus music site, and I look after “the purple website” and our Facebook page. I’m pretty certain there would be a lot less purple in this website if Larry were running that too. Anyway, something Larry and I haven’t yet talked openly about… is that I’ve recently been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Yes, it was a bit of a shock to me too!
A hint of troubles yet to come
So, how did it start? Originally, it seems, with random symptoms in 2018, including a sudden (and scary) worsening of my eyesight. At that time I had brain and spine MRIs, and saw various doctors. I emerged from all those medical adventures with a lot of bills to pay, but no diagnosis of anything but optic neuritis. Over the course of a few months, my vision issues became less of a distraction, and life continued pretty much as normal. After a while, Larry’s medical stuff took over, with his diagnosis of prostate cancer, and his subsequent treatment, and then shoulder surgery, then a return of his cancer, and more treatment.
Finally, in 2022, with Larry doing well, we dared to hope that we might get a break from medical issues for a while. We even managed to go to England in July, to see my family for the first time in six years. We caught Covid while we were there, but still managed to salvage a few days of real “vacation time” to spend with family and friends. We’ve since been telling ourselves that we need a do-over of that trip, without Covid getting in the way. We really don’t want to have to wait another six years to see our UK family and friends again!
Enjoying life in sunny Basingstoke!
Unexpected health problems in 2022
I started to experience some weird symptoms in September. Larry and I were at our summer cottage at Bay View, and I noticed that my left leg felt numb. I thought perhaps I’d done too much walking, or had some kind of injury that I hadn’t noticed before. When the situation didn’t improve, I reluctantly dragged myself along to see a doctor in mid-September, and was referred to a neurologist, just in case.
With a neurology appointment safely scheduled for November, Larry and I continued to enjoy our time “up north”. I walked around on legs that felt like Bambi’s (but definitely didn’t look like Bambi’s), and tried not to worry too much. We drove back and forth between Bay View and our home in Holland, and continued with all our usual activities. I had some strange and random symptoms during that time, but I didn’t panic, because I had a neurology appointment booked anyway. No problem, right? A lot of British people are like that, by the way. I tell people that we don’t generally see a doctor unless it feels possible that we actually might not last the day. That’s a joke, but there’s a fair amount of truth in it.
Enjoying life at Bay View. Not shown: wobbly legs
A very scary Halloween
My plan to continue life as normal went badly wrong on October 31st. I woke up that morning feeling as if I’d been drinking – a lot! That’s not something I do, so the feeling of lightheaded wooziness was very unfamiliar to me. My right arm felt as if it wanted to detach itself from my shoulder and float away, and my eyesight had once again taken a turn for the worse. When the situation hadn’t improved by lunchtime, I was concerned enough to go to Urgent Care. I spent several hours having various tests, but getting no obvious explanation for the mystery symptoms. Eventually, I was referred to the ER, in an attempt to “rule out some of the big, ugly things”.
In the ER, still smiling behind the mask
The big, ugly things (and why we missed the trick-or-treating)
Halloween is always such a fun evening where we live. We’d been looking forward to handing out huge amounts of candy and treats to groups of children. Instead, we spent the evening in the hospital, where Larry did some reading, finished a crossword or two, and took a nap… and I had a brain MRI. A few days later, I had a follow-up appointment with a neurologist here in Holland, who confirmed my diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Next, I had a spine MRI, three steroid infusions (that sadly didn’t ease my symptoms) and another neurology appointment to talk about the MRI results. It was interesting (in a slightly odd way) to look at the scan images. It turns out that a lot has been happening in my brain and spine since my last scans in 2018!
Starting treatment
Multiple Sclerosis is a disease that affects the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), and causes a wide range of symptoms. It’s different for everyone. In December, I started taking medication that’s designed to slow down (or stop) the progression of the disease. This medication is not for the faint-hearted, and comes with a variety of possible side-effects. Potential side effects… or worsening MS symptoms? The choice was clear to me, so taking the medication seemed to be the wise course of action. Once again, we had a stressful time with our health insurance company (nothing new there), and they refused to authorize the medication for me (insert a heavy sigh of frustration here). I’m thankful for the drug company’s Patient Assistance Program for making it possible for me to take this medication, at least for the next year.
Continuing with our busy Christmas!
One thing Larry and I were determined about… was that we didn’t want my new MS diagnosis to get in the way of our holiday performances! We’ve never cancelled a performance yet, and didn’t want to start! Having established that I’m still able to play handbells (thank goodness!), we went ahead with our busy month of duet performances, and had a great time sharing our music with local audiences. December was insanely busy for us. November had been chaotic and stressful, with doctors’ appointments and tests, and we’d never really managed to get ready for Christmas. We decided to make the handbell performances our priority, and let everything else go, apart from making an exciting trip through the snow to cut down our Christmas tree. Apologies to all the people who didn’t get a Christmas card from us in 2022!
When Christmas Day arrived, we spent a quiet day at home together, and that was all we needed.
What happens next?
There are lots of things I can’t do, now that I have MS. I’ll probably never be able to play the flute. I can’t drive a car, or even ride a bike. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever run a marathon. I can’t play the flute or the cello, and my dream of being a superstar harpist will never come true.
Of course, I couldn’t do any of those things before I had MS either. The truth is that I plan to continue doing everything I normally do. I’ll have more neurology appointments in my future, and regular blood tests, and brain and spine MRIs. It’s reassuring to know that I’ll be closely monitored for any changes, but there’s no reason to think I’m going to go downhill any time soon.
Larry and I have dealt with difficult stuff before. We know for certain that we can’t live in “what if…” mode. We have to focus on all the things we can do, and not stress about things that might never happen. We’re both looking forward to more handbell duet performances in the coming months, as well as rehearsing and performing with the Kalamazoo Ringers. In just a few months’ time, we’ll be able to open our summer cottage at Bay View again. If enough snow falls in northern Michigan in the next few weeks, we might even take a bonus drive north. The Victorian cottages at Bay View look so pretty with a covering of freshly-fallen snow!
There’s also the Bay View Week of Handbells in August to look forward to, so I’ll have lots of music to work on in the months ahead. This year’s concert will include two of Larry’s handbell arrangements, which makes the whole event extra exciting for us!
A few words of thanks
Thank you to the handful of close family and friends who’ve kept my secret, and helped to keep my spirits up since my diagnosis. I’ve appreciated your messages of support, thoughtful advice, prayers and smiles. I’ll admit that I was somewhat shaken to receive this unexpected diagnosis, and there have definitely been some frustrations in recent weeks. My way of dealing with frustration is to vent constantly; if I have something to complain about, I’ll have a self-pitying rant, then I’ll feel better. I appreciate the friends and family who’ve listened to my whining/complaining and managed not to bash me with kitchen utensils.
I had originally planned not to share the news about my diagnosis more widely – and I’ve been reliably informed that I “still look fine from the outside” – but I think I cope better with things out in the open. So, now you know what’s been happening, and thank you for reading this far. I’m doing well, and I’m optimistic about the future. MS is definitely not fun, but life is still good. If you have any questions, you’ll find me on our Facebook page!
A popular saying here in Michigan (and probably in other places too) is “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes!” It often seems that the weather can go through several seasons in a single day. We wake up to clouds, the sun comes out and we dress for spring… then suddenly the weather turns cold, and rain is pouring down!
Here’s an original handbell composition called Wait Five Minutes. Michigan weather was Larry’s inspiration for this piece. Carla took the photos and video; most of them at Bay View, a summer community in northern Michigan. Highlights include footage of a torrential downpour, a foggy day on a Lake Michigan beach, and an unusual-looking squirrel!
More information about Wait Five Minutes
Wait Five Minutes is for 3 octaves of handbells, Level 2+. Sheet music for this original composition is available to purchase and download from Choraegus. You can either purchase an individual copy (useful for massed ringing events, or for preview), or purchase the full choir license. Purchase of the full choir license gives you our no-fuss permission to print up to 15 copies for your group.
Your purchase of the full-choir license also gives permission for you to perform, broadcast and live-stream this piece as part of a concert or worship service without the need for any additional license or fee, although we ask you to credit the composer (Larry Sue) and publisher (Choraegus) in any printed media such as concert programs, and online (in video descriptions). See our licensing agreement for full details. We appreciate your help in spreading the word about Choraegus handbell music. If you record a video of your group playing any of our pieces, we’d love to see it. You’re welcome to share it with us on our Facebook page too!
Choraegus handbell music is designed to come to you as a PDF file, which you’ll need to download. 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, we recommend 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.
More Choraegus handbell music about the weather
People often ask us about handbell music on a particular theme. Here are some other pieces on the theme of “weather”:
Winter Dance – a 5-octave, Level 4 arrangement of Seiichi Kyoda’s wonderful, wintry piece
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If someone has asked us a question even once, it will be there, along with the answer. Please contact us if you don’t find the information you need, and we’ll be happy to help.
Christmas Day has been and gone, but we’re determined to celebrate the full twelve days of Christmas. We’re at the blissful stage of the year when we can finally take a break, catch our breath, and relax after a busy month of holiday handbell performances!
The holiday season is always our favorite time of year. We get the chance to go out and share our Christmas handbell music, meet new people, and visit new places. We were fortunate that the recent snowy-blizzard weather waited until the second half of December to hit West Michigan, so we didn’t have to make any long drives in bad conditions. It’s always a risk when we arrange our holiday performance schedule, because we all know how unpredictable Michigan winter weather can be! Having said that, we’ve lived in Michigan since 2016, so we’re more used to driving through the snow now. Remember when we drove six hours a day for Larry’s radiation treatment in the winter of 2021? If we can survive that, we can survive anything!
Our 2022 holiday performances
Our 2022 holiday performance season began early this year, on November 19th, with our first of three performances at the Kerstmarkt. This Christmas market in Downtown Holland is always a highlight of our holiday season, but this year was a bit different! The opening day of the Kerstmarkt arrived on a day when snow was falling, and the temperature was… well, chilly, to say the least. Still, we’ve never cancelled a performance yet, so we were determined that this one would go ahead. We still managed to have fun, and we admired the courage of anyone who came out to shop in such terrible weather!
Handbells in the snow
For anyone worrying about our handbells and how they cope with extreme cold, we did take some precautions. We took the bells out into the garage a couple of hours before the performance, so that they’d get used to the drop in temperature gradually. We also didn’t play them too loudly when we got to the event. When we play in the cold, we always notice the change in the way the bells sound, so we don’t put any undue strain on them. There are some bells that really, really don’t like the cold, and they simply refuse to play, so we generally leave everything higher than G6 in the case, and don’t play any pieces that involve any “unhappy” bells.
Fortunately, we had two more opportunities to play at the Kerstmarkt. The weather was never as fierce as that first session, and we even had a bit of sunshine and blue sky!
We were privileged to be invited to perform two duet concerts during Advent. The first was at First United Methodist Church in Kalamazoo, as part of their lunchtime Advent Concert Series. It was wonderful to be able to share our music in such a beautiful space.
Our second concert was at Second Reformed Church in Zeeland. We performed as part of their Second Series: Sublime Art in a Sacred Space concert series. We didn’t have piano accompaniment this time; just an hour of seasonal handbell duets. It was fun to meet and chat with audience members at the post-concert reception.
“Return visit” handbell performances
We’re always pleased to be invited back to give handbell duet performances for groups we’ve played for in past years. This year was our fourth Christmas performance at the Gary Byker Memorial Library in Hudsonville. It’s always a popular event, run by the Friends of the Library. We also spent another evening in concert with the Zeeland Community Band. We’ve been at the ZCB Christmas concert since 2016, and it’s become an annual tradition for us. The band has been growing in number over the last few years, and they sound better than ever! We made return visits to several senior communities and local organizations this year too.
Corporate parties are some of our favorite holiday events, and we had fun playing at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. We played Christmas music to welcome guests as they arrived at the party.
Concerts with the Kalamazoo Ringers
This December, we also enjoyed playing in a couple of concerts as part of the Kalamazoo Ringers. We took part in the annual Christmas in Kalamazoo event and the group’s Christmas concert at Grace Harbor Church. We even played one of Larry’s arrangements – Gaudete– and the full concert is now available to watch on YouTube.
Thank you to everyone who helped make this holiday season fun!
If you booked us for a performance or Christmas program or wrote a review of our performance – thank you. If you came to one of our concerts, we appreciate you too! To all those who offered us coffee or a meal, chatted with us, or prayed for us – thank you. We enjoyed sharing our handbell music with you, and we hope 2023 will be a happy and healthy year for you all!
O Holy Night is one of the most beautiful and popular carols for Christmas. Also known as Cantique de Noël, it was written as a poem by Placide Cappeau, and set to music by Aldolphe Adam in 1847.
“O holy night! the stars are brightly shining; It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth. Long lay the world in sin and error pining, Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope–the weary world rejoices, For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn! Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices! O night divine, O night when Christ was born! O night, O holy night, O night divine!“
We’re in the middle of a snowstorm here in West Michigan. It’s unusual for us to have so much snowfall on the ground this side of Christmas. But one thing’s for certain; it makes a beautiful backdrop for a Christmas handbell video. Here’s our new 12-bell arrangement of O Holy Night:
More about O Holy Night, 12-bell version
As with all Choraegus 12-bell pieces, O Holy Night is suitable for 3-6 ringers. We’ve deliberately kept it free from techniques that need tables or foam pads, so that handbell musicians can play from music stands easily. Sheet music is available to purchase and download from Choraegus. This arrangement is available for three different ranges of handbells – one version using C5-G6, another for F5-C7, and another for Bb4-F6. Be sure to refer the bells-used charts on the Choraegus webpage to make sure you have all the bells you need, and be certain to purchase the right version.
Other arrangements of O Holy Night from Choraegus
O Holy Night is also available as an arrangement for 8 handbells.
Things to know about Choraegus handbell music
Choraegus handbell music scores are designed to be downloaded as a PDF files. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchasing a 12-bell arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to six copies for your handbell group – so please don’t pay for more copies than you need! A practice track is also available separately – useful if your ringers need to practise their parts without the full group being available.
Your 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 arranger (Larry Sue) and the publisher of the piece(Choraegus) on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials such as concert programs. We appreciate your help in getting the word out about Choraegus handbell music – and if you make a video of your handbell choir playing any of our pieces, we’d love to see it!
If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide. We designed this to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll be happy to help!
The Monday Musical Club is a non-profit organisation dedicated to music education and promotion of creative and performing arts. Based in St. Joseph, Michigan, they hold a wide variety of education events and music performances. We were excited to be asked to present a shared concert with our friends Gary and Martha Matthews!
About Gary and Martha Matthews
Gary and Martha also live in Holland, and they’re a talented couple! Gary studied organ, music education, and sacred music, and holds a doctorate in Worship Studies. He served as Pastor of Worship and the Arts at Highland Park Baptist Church in Southfield, MI, and at Christ Memorial Church in Holland, MI. He’s a published composer, and has been performing for more than forty years, with piano, organ, trumpet and voice.
Martha holds a Bachelors in Music Education and a Masters in Flute Performance. She has played principal flute with Florida Symphonic Pops, Florida Wind Symphony, Gold Coast Opera, Gold Coast Ballet and the Washington Idaho Symphony. Martha directs the Kalamazoo Ringers, and is a sought-after handbell clinician. In concert with Gary, she plays flute, whistles, bell tree, and piano.
A concert with handbells, flute, piano, trumpet, and more!
We held our shared concert at First Congregational Church of St. Joseph. This is a beautiful sanctuary for a music performance! It was a treat for the four of us to be able to perform together. We’d spent most of our summer at our cottage near Petoskey, and Gary and Martha had been in Holland. Planning a concert and rehearsing is a challenge when you’re in different towns! Thanks to the power of email, and our individual rehearsals, we made it work.
Our program included music on a variety of instruments, including handbells (of course!) Gary and Martha opened the concert with a piece for piano and trumpet, and we continued with a couple of our favorite handbell duets. We also enjoyed the opportunity to get together as a quartet to perform some pieces – including Larry’s infamous arrangement of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing that the four of us had previously played for one of the Kalamazoo Ringers’ online Christmas concerts. We all played Blessed Assurance together, with a brand-new flute part that Larry had written specially for this concert. It was fun to find that some of the audience hadn’t seen handbells played in our 4-in-hand style before. We talked to audience members afterwards, and answered questions about our technique and the way we move.
Here’s the full program!
We enjoyed listening to Gary and Martha’s pieces, particularly Brent Olstad’s I Love to Tell the Story. Martha’s flute-played was enthralling to hear, and the audience clearly loved this piece. We finished the concert with an extra surprise – Larry’s lively arrangement of Ding Dong, Merrily on High. This is another arrangement for handbells, piano and flute, and it makes a perfect ending for a concert.
Our thanks go to the Monday Musical Club for inviting us to share our music in concert, and to everyone who came to listen. We hope to have the opportunity to perform in concert with Gary and Martha again someday!
If you’d like to provide an opportunity for us to perform in concert with Gary and Martha again, or you’d like to host a handbell duet performance, please get in touch with us, and we’ll talk more!
