Today is the first day of the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells! We’ll be spending the next four days playing some beautiful, exciting and challenging music at the John M. Hall Auditorium in Bay View, Petoskey. More than a hundred handbell musicians will rehearse there together this week, under the direction of Fred Gramann.
You can find out more about this event, and why it will always hold a special place in our hearts, by reading our article about the Bay View Week of Handbells and taking a look at our gallery of photos. This year will be our 10th year at the Week of Handbells!
Treble sectional rehearsal at the 2018 Bay View Week of Handbells
At the end of this week’s rehearsals, there will be a concert. It’s open to the public and free to attend. The concert will be held on Thursday, August 15th, 2019 at 7:30pm in the John M. Hall Auditorium, 1715 Encampment Ave., Petoskey, Michigan. An offering will be taken to benefit the Bay View Association Music Scholarship Fund.
We’re excited to be performing one of Larry’s original compositions this year!
This year’s concert repertoire:
Acclamation in G Minor by Karen Thompson
Through the Walk of Life by Matthew Compton
Songs in the Night by Sondra Tucker
A Glorious Everlasting Hallelujah Raise by Fred Gramann
We enjoyed the opportunity to share our handbell music with guests at the recent Great Lakes Regional Convention of the AGO. We demonstrated our duets at a reception hosted by Third Reformed Church here in Holland.
Information about The Bass Ringer’s Notebook and music from Choraegus
For anyone who came to the presentation for the American Guild of Organists (or missed it!), we thought it might be helpful to share some information here.
Handbell performances and workshops
Several people talked with us about our availability for duet performances. We can also work with individuals and church handbell choirs, either by attending a rehearsal, or leading a workshop session. We can help your ringers improve their basic technique or learn more advanced treble or bass skills. If you’re interested in booking us, please contact us and let us know the type of performance or workshop you’re interested in, your location, and when you’d like the performance to happen.
You can find more information about performances, workshops and our fees in the Book Us section of this website.
At Los Altos Lutheran Church, California, May 2019 (Photo: Carl S. Gutekunst)
For beginning or less-experienced groups, and also for quartets, we recommend our Surprisingly Easy eight-bell pieces. Our 8-bell music can also be useful for small groups of ringers who want an extra challenge. It can work well for small groups who want to continue ringing through the summer when the choir is taking a break.
Music from Choraegus will come to you as a digital download; a PDF file with permission to make a certain number of copies for your group. You can find more information and all the “small print” in the licensing agreement, and we also recommend our step-by-step guide!
If you’d like to try our 8-bell music before you spend any money, you might like to check out some of our free arrangements. Also available for free are the binder cover sheets for our music, as shown on the music binders on display at the reception.
Immortal, Invisible, God Only WiseThe Bass Ringer’s Notebook – available now!
Information about Larry’s book on bass ringing
Larry’s book – The Bass Ringer’s Notebook – is available from Choraegus. This is not a digital download; it’s an actual book. We will lovingly package up a copy and send to you by mail when you’ve made your purchase.
Any questions?
Our thanks go to everyone who came to the reception at the Great Lakes Regional Convention of the AGO. Thanks to everyone who asked questions, and listened to our performance. Thanks also to the members of Third Reformed Church for their generous hospitality. If there’s anything we forgot to mention here, or you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us, and we’ll be happy to help!
Since moving here in 2016, we’ve enjoyed street performing in Downtown Holland. Thank you to everyone who stopped to listen to our music at the first of this year’s Downtown Holland Street Performer Series. We played our handbell duets for more than two hours on Thursday evening, in perfect spring weather.
It was a beautiful evening for music in Downtown Holland!Carla at our first Street Performer Series of 2019
If you missed the first evening, the 2019 Street Performer Series runs on Thursdays until the end of August, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm. We’ll be performing again on the following dates:
Thursday, July 25, outside the Knickerbocker Theatre at 86 E 8th St;
Thursday, August 29, outside Resthaven Warm Friend at 5 E 8th St.
We also play our handbell duets in Downtown Holland at other times during the summer. Look out for us on 8th Street on Sunday afternoons! If you’re going to be visiting Downtown Holland and you’d like to know when we’re planning our next street performance, please contact us. Sreet performing tends to be weather-dependent, so here in Michigan it’s often a last-minute decision!
Calliope House – one of the pieces we played in Downtown Holland (recorded in California)
Thursdays evenings are always fun in Downtown Holland. Stores and restaurants are open, and 8th Street is full of entertainment. The event is free to attend and enjoy, but tips for the performers are appreciated!
After a successful application process, we’re pleased to be be taking part in the 2019 Downtown Holland Street Performer Series. It’s our third season of performances at this exciting summer event!
Larry and Carla at the Downtown Holland Street Performer Series
The Street Performer Series is an annual event here in Holland, Michigan, taking place on Thursday evenings throughout the summer. Downtown Holland comes alive with the sights and sounds of musicians, magicians, circus acts, dancers, face painters and other talented performers. It’s a fun community event, and a great way to spend a summer evening with friends and family.
Our performances at this year’s event
The 2019 Street Performer Series starts on Thursday, June 13. It runs for twelve consecutive Thursdays until the end of August, from 6:30pm to 8:30pm.
June 13, outside Resthaven Warm Friend at 5 E 8th St;
July 25, outside the Knickerbocker Theatre at 86 E 8th St;
August 29, outside Resthaven Warm Friend at 5 E 8th St.
A recent performance in California
Our thanks go to Gentex Corporation for sponsoring this event, and also to the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs for their support through the Holland Area Arts Council. We’re looking forward to another summer of music in Downtown Holland!
We’re finally getting back to handbell duet performances – in California! After Larry’s surgery in January, we had to take a break from playing handbell duets for a while. We’d had a busy run-up to Christmas, so we cleared our schedule for a few months to give Larry the opportunity to relax for a while and make a good recovery. Larry’s not the kind of person to sit around and be idle, so he made good use of his time, and wrote lots of new handbell music. However, now the “relaxation” is over, and we’re excited to be preparing for some spring handbell performances!
We’re excited to be going back to the Bay Area Spring Ring!
Our first performance weekend is almost upon us. We’ll be heading to the San Francisco Bay Area, for the Bay Area Spring Ring. We’ll be teaching classes on bass handbells and British-style four-in-hand ringing, and presenting the lunchtime concert on Saturday. We’re looking forward to going back to the Bay Area and seeing some of our California friends again!
Returning to the San Francisco Bay Area for a concert!
While we’re in California this weekend, our home city of Holland will be holding its annual Tulip Time Festival. There will be parades, Dutch dancing, five million tulips… and a lot of visitors in town! On Sunday afternoon, we’ll be joining the celebrations by presenting a concert of handbell duets at Los Altos Lutheran Church. Our program, All the Way from Holland, will include a selection of our favourite hymns and traditional melodies, with a few Dutch tunes too!
After Sunday’s concert, we’ll have just two days before we fly back to Michigan. We’ll be trying our best to visit a few of our favourite California locations while we have the chance. We’re hoping to return to Point Lobos and Half Moon Bay, and, if time allows, to go to Santa Cruz in search of sea lions! We’ll enjoy being tourists in the Bay Area for a couple of days, then we’ll be heading back to Holland to enjoy the last few days of Tulip Time!
Tulips in Holland, Michigan – bright and beautiful!
Spring has arrived! Here in Holland, Michigan we must admit that we’re sorry to say goodbye to those snowy winter days. However, we’re looking forward to our city’s annual Tulip Time festival in May!
To put us in the mood for spring, our latest 12-bell arrangement is the popular hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. This hymn is sung to several different tunes, and the one in our arrangement is the seventeenth-century English melody ROYAL OAK.
Sight-reading on video!
Our thanks go to J.C. for being willing to help us play through some of our recent 12-bell titles during his recent visit to Michigan. We recorded this video on our first read-through, so absolutely no rehearsal went into this, but you’ll get the idea.
Playing this arrangement
As with all our 12-bell pieces, this arrangement is available in two versions. We played C5 to G6 in our video, but there’s also a version for F5 to C7.
If you’d like to play All Things Bright and Beautiful, you can purchase, download and print the sheet music from Choraegus. You need only pay once, and print out up to 6 copies of this 12-bell piece for your handbell choir.
If you haven’t bought music from us before, we’d recommend that you take a look at the licensing agreement and our step-by-step guide. We designed the guide to help you purchase and download our music in a stress-free way!
Looking for music for a full handbell choir?
If you look on the Choraegus site, you’ll also find our arrangement of All Things Bright and Beautiful for 3-5 octave handbell choir.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please check our frequently-asked questions first. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
Tulips in Holland, Michigan – bright and beautiful!
Country Gardens is a traditional English folk melody and a popular Morris Dance tune. It was first published in 1728. Cecil Sharp collected it and passed it on to Percy Grainger. Grainger then arranged it for piano in 1918. It became one of Grainger’s best-known works and brought him great success.
The song was given the title English Country Garden by Jimmie Rodgers, who sung it in 1962 with the lyrics shown below:
“How many kinds of sweet flowers grow in an English country garden? We’ll tell you now of some that we know; those we miss you’ll surely pardon Daffodils, heart’s ease and flox, meadowsweet and lady smocks Gentain, lupine and tall hollyhocks, Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, blue forget-me-nots In an English country garden”
There are alternative, less flowery, words too. As children in England, Carla and her friends used to sing:
“What do you do if you can’t find a loo, in an English country garden? Pull down your pants and exterminate the ants, in an English country garden”
Our third attempt – not perfect, but improving!
We had fun playing through this new arrangement for 12 handbells. Our thanks go to J.C. for helping us out during his short visit to Michigan. The video was only our third attempt at the piece, and we hadn’t quite mastered the middle section. However, with a bit more rehearsal time, this piece shouldn’t be too challenging.
Would you like to play Country Gardens?
If you’d like to play Country Gardens, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
We’re excited to have joined the Kalamazoo Ringers for their spring concert season. Concerts with the Kalamazoo Ringers are always exciting!
The Kalamazoo Ringers (KR) is one of the oldest continuously-operating community choirs in the country. Janet Van Valey founded the group in 1981, and Martha Matthews recently took over as director. We first connected with Martha in 2015, when we travelled to Pennsylvania to perform with Philadelphia Bronze. We were delighted when she invited us to be part of the Kalamazoo Ringers for the spring 2019 season!
As we usually play duets, it’s an exciting adventure to be performing as part of a bigger group. In particular, Larry’s happy to have the opportunity to get back to playing those aluminum bass bells again!
The first concert of the spring season
We enjoyed the first concert of the spring season on Sunday. This took place at First Congregational Church of Battle Creek, Michigan. The Kalamazoo Ringers performed as part of the Sunday Afternoon Live concert series.
The theme of the concert was The Versatility of Handbells, and the varied program included Cathy Moklebust’s beautiful arrangement of Greensleeves, Arnold Sherman’s Misty, a lively In the Mood arranged by Hart Morris, and the cherry blossom-inspired Moon Over the Ruined Castle arranged by Kazuko Okamoto.
We appreciated the considerable talents of Gary Matthews, who played organ and trumpet, and Rose Wiersma, who played the clarinet. Rose is a dear friend of ours who directs the Zeeland Community Band. We’ve been taking a break from collaborating with the band while Larry’s been recovering from surgery, but we’re hoping to get back to performing with them soon!
The next concert is in Holland!
If you missed Sunday’s concert, there are still several more opportunities to see the Kalamazoo Ringers this season. The next concert is on Sunday, March 24th at 5:00pm in Holland!
Further information about the Kalamazoo Ringers and their upcoming concerts can be found on their website. We’re looking forward to making more beautiful music with the group in the next couple of months!
Larry’s been writing a lot of new music in recent weeks, as he continues his recovery from surgery. His son J.C. recently came to visit (currently studying in Alabama). We enjoyed an opportunity to play through a few of the new 12-bell titles. The first to be available from Choraegus is the African-American spiritual Give Me Jesus.
New 12-bell music – Give Me Jesus
This piece proved not to be too difficult for the three of us to play, and would also work for six people with two bells each, of course. The video was recorded on only our third attempt at playing the piece – so it’s not perfect, but you’ll get a good idea of how it sounds. We’re playing the C5 to G6 version, but (as with all our 12-bell pieces) it’s also available for F5 to C7.
Would you like to play Give Me Jesus?
If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. If you’re new to buying Choraegus handbell music, we recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this to keep the buying process as stress-free as possible!
In the last few weeks since his prostate cancer surgery, Larry hasn’t been sitting around idly doing nothing; well, not all the time, anyway. He’s been writing more handbell music!
He managed to sprain his ankle during a brief walk outside on an icy day, which didn’t do much to speed up his recovery. For that reason, we’ve been been getting through more seasons of Netflix shows than at any time in our history. Still, Larry has also been attending physical therapy sessions and doing as much exercise as his ankle will allow. In a few days’ time he’ll be going to his six-week post-surgery appointment. We hope the current restrictions on lifting (as in, certain handbells) will be removed. That would mean we could get back to some kind of a rehearsal schedule for our duets!
What’s Larry been writing?
Anyway, Larry’s not the kind of person who wants to spend lots of time in front of the TV, so he’s also been working on some new handbell music. There are a couple of new eight-bell arrangements, which we’ll be hoping to record and publish in the coming weeks, as well as several original compositions for full handbell choir. Click on any of the titles below for more information, as well as previews of the scores, and mp3s.
Handbell arrangements from the Living Water Project
Between 1989 and 2003, Larry directed a choir in California, and from there came the Living Water Composition Project. Larry’s recent exciting project has been to look back at some of these original choral songs and find some that might be reworked as handbell pieces! So far, we have the following new titles:
Home at Last The first of the LWCP pieces to be arranged for handbells, this is a Level 4+ piece for 5-8 octaves.
Emmaus This is the handbell/handchime version of the Living Water song about Jesus meeting two disciples on the Emmaus road. It’s a Level 4 arrangement for 5-7 octaves of bells and 3 octaves of handchimes.
You Must Trust This is a minor-key jazz piece that’s going to be fun to play! It’s Level 4, arranged for 5-7 octaves of handbells with percussion.
New hymn arrangements for handbells
Several hymn arrangements have been published in the last couple of weeks, with more to follow soon:
Jesus Shall Reign This new arrangement of the popular hymn has some different touches that will challenge your ringers. It’s Level 4, for 5-7 octaves of handbells.
Come Down, O Love Divine This beautiful hymn tune (DOWN AMPNEY) was written by Ralph Vaughan Williams. This new arrangement is Level 3-, scored for 3 or 5 octaves of handbells and 3 octaves of handchimes.
The Lord is My Shepherd This is an arrangement of the hymn tune POLAND. It was commissioned by our friend Caroline Harnly in honor of her mother. Caroline directs the San Francisco State University Handbell Choir. It’s a Level 3 arrangement for 4-5 octaves of handbells and 2 octaves of handchimes.
Give Me Jesus This new 12-bell arrangement is available in two versions; one for bells from C5 to G6 and the other for F5 to C7.
And now for something completely different…
Yes, We Have No Bananas For the adventurous bucket-slingers among you, this is a Low Ding Zone arrangement of the popular song by Frank Silver and Irving Cohn. It’s arranged for 7 less-than-sane bass ringers. This piece was originally written in 1923, so it entered the public domain this year, and we can now offer it for sale! You’ll need bells from G2 to D5, and chimes from Bb2 to C5, plus a shaker or other rhythm toy.
All of these new titles are available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. If you’re buying our music online for the first time, we’d recommend that you read the Licensing Agreement and our step-by-step guide before making your purchase.
Any questions?
If you have any questions, try looking at the Frequently Asked Questions first. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.
Finally… thank you!
Thank you to everyone who’s been buying music from us. There’s so much great handbell music available these days, from so many places, so we truly appreciate your support!
