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!
Where have the last few weeks gone? We’re only just getting around to writing about our trip to California for the Bay Area Spring Ring!
We visited the San Francisco Bay Area to take part in the Bay Area Spring Ring, an annual event that takes place in Cupertino. In the days before we moved from California to Michigan, Spring Ring was an annual event for us, so we appreciated the opportunity to go back there this year.
This year’s Spring Ring
We flew out of Grand Rapids on the morning of Friday, May 3rd, and arrived in San Jose mid-afternoon. We picked up our rental car there, and drove to Mountain View. This is where we lived until the summer of 2016! We were excited to drive and walk around the city and see the change in the scenery since that time. There’s now a huge apartment complex that towers over the small apartment where we used to live! We had lunch in Mountain View, and marvelled at the sunshine and the lack of humidity in the air. It had clearly been too long since we’d been in the Bay Area!
We arrived in Cupertino and checked into our hotel before rushing off to the first rehearsal at Spring Ring. It was a three-hour Intense Ring rehearsal, directed by guest clinician Nick Hansen. The rehearsal finished at 10:00pm, and our brains and bodies were still convinced it was 1:00am. However, lots of work had been done, and the music was really taking shape.
After a good sleep at the hotel, we returned to Valley Church the following morning for Saturday’s Spring Ring event. It was so much fun to catch up with some of our friends we hadn’t seen for several years! We taught classes on bass handbells and British-style four-in-hand ringing. We also performed a short lunchtime concert of 8-bell duets for the event participants.
Gwerzy – still (and perhaps forever) a work-in-progress!
Spring Ring ended with a public concert, where we played our 8-bell arrangement of To God Be the Glory. We also enjoyed performances from Velocity, Bay Bells and Tintabulations, as well as the massed choirs. The Intense Ring choir played H. Dean Wagner’s arrangement Fantasy on Kingsfold and Nick Hansen’s fun arrangement of And All That Jazz. After a fun and exhausting day, this photo pretty much sums up how we felt:
Larry took a nap during the rehearsal for the final concert!
Sunday morning’s adventures
We started our Sunday with a return visit to Los Altos Lutheran Church, where we played some duets in the morning service. This church (and the Rejoicing Ringers) are very close to our hearts. We played there when we lived in the Bay Area and had the opportunity to work with their handbell choir on several occasions. It was wonderful to return to this church to see our friends there again, and we appreciated the warm welcome we received.
At Los Altos Lutheran Church (Photos: Carl S. Gutekunst)
Our handbell duet concert – All the Way from Holland
Our duet concert was scheduled for 3:00pm at Los Altos Lutheran. We spent so much time chatting with friends after the morning service that we didn’t actually go anywhere else before the concert. Jet-lag was beginning to set in, so we took a quick nap before the audience started to arrive!
It was exciting to see more of our Bay Area friends, and we appreciated that so many people made the effort to come along and listen to our musical offering. The annual Tulip Time festival was taking place in Holland at the time, so we decided to introduce the Bay Area audience to a few traditional Dutch tunes in our afternoon program. We also played some of our favorite hymns and traditional melodies. Here’s Calliope House, our soon-to-be-published eight-bell arrangement of a catchy jig written by Dave Richardson:
Vacation time!
After our handbell events were over, we were able to spend the next couple of days enjoying some vacation time! We visited some of the places we’d always enjoyed when we lived in the Bay Area, including the ruggedly-beautiful coastline at Point Lobos State Park.
Point Lobos State Natural ReserveSibling rivalry? Goslings at Point Lobos
Not surprisingly, there is a distinct shortage of sea lions on the shores of Lake Michigan. We were determined to make time to go to Santa Cruz, walk along the wharf, and get close to some of the sea lions there. It was always one of our favourite things to do when we lived in the Bay Area.
If Larry were a sea lion
During our two days doing tourist stuff in California, we also found time to visit Monterey, Carmel (briefly), Pigeon Point, and Half Moon Bay. Poplar Beach is a great place for a nice walk on a windy day, and a chance to search for sea glass too! We enjoyed reminiscing about our years together in California. We have no regrets about moving away, but sincerely hope it won’t be another three years before we can return for another visit. The Bay Area was where Larry was born, of course. It’s also where we started our life together as a married couple, so it will always have a special place in our hearts.
Together at Poplar Beach, Half Moon Bay
So many thanks to give!
Our heartfelt thanks go to everyone who helped make this trip possible for us. Thanks to Handbell Ventures for their generous support – inviting us to be part of this year’s Bay Area Spring Ring, arranging for our travel and accommodation, and finding a location for our Sunday concert. Handbell Ventures is dedicated to promoting the education and enjoyment of handbells in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, and you can find out more by visiting their website.
Our love and thanks also go to all at Los Altos Lutheran Church, especially to the Rejoicing Ringers and their director Lynda Alexander, for all their help in hosting our Sunday afternoon concert and providing a wonderful reception afterwards. We’re grateful to Carl and Randy for taking photos and videos of our performances, and to our friends Carol and Bill for welcoming us into their home. Thanks to everyone who came to our concert and helped to support and encourage us. We hope to be back in the Bay Area again soon!
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!
Gaudete! (meaning “Rejoice!”) is a sacred Christmas carol, first published in 1581 in Piae Cantiones, a collection of Finnish/Swedish sacred songs. Choraegus is pleased to present this new Level 4+ arrangement by Larry Sue.
The piece is for 3-8 octaves of handbells, with optional handchimes. It’s a lively arrangement that we hope your handbell choir will have fun playing! A cajón accompaniment is also available.
Where to get the music for Gaudete!
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from our music site, Choraegus. For just $25 (plus $5 for the cajón part), you can print up to 15 copies, so you only need to pay once for your whole choir. Don’t pay for more copies than you need!
If you’re buying music from Choraegus for the first time, please read the Licensing Agreement before you make your purchase. We also recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this guide to help make the purchase and download process stress-free!
Please note that our music is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer; no more waiting for music to arrive in the mail!
Any questions?
If you have any questions, you’re always welcome to contact us, and we’ll be happy to help.
Spring has arrived! Here in Holland, Michigan we must admit that we’re sorry to say goodbye to those snowy winter days. However, we’re looking forward to our city’s annual Tulip Time festival in May!
To put us in the mood for spring, our latest 12-bell arrangement is the popular hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful. This hymn is sung to several different tunes, and the one in our arrangement is the seventeenth-century English melody ROYAL OAK.
Sight-reading on video!
Our thanks go to J.C. for being willing to help us play through some of our recent 12-bell titles during his recent visit to Michigan. We recorded this video on our first read-through, so absolutely no rehearsal went into this, but you’ll get the idea.
Playing this arrangement
As with all our 12-bell pieces, this arrangement is available in two versions. We played C5 to G6 in our video, but there’s also a version for F5 to C7.
If you’d like to play All Things Bright and Beautiful, you can purchase, download and print the sheet music from Choraegus. You need only pay once, and print out up to 6 copies of this 12-bell piece for your handbell choir.
If you haven’t bought music from us before, we’d recommend that you take a look at the licensing agreement and our step-by-step guide. We designed the guide to help you purchase and download our music in a stress-free way!
Looking for music for a full handbell choir?
If you look on the Choraegus site, you’ll also find our arrangement of All Things Bright and Beautiful for 3-5 octave handbell choir.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please check our frequently-asked questions first. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
Tulips in Holland, Michigan – bright and beautiful!
Country Gardens is a traditional English folk melody and a popular Morris Dance tune. It was first published in 1728. Cecil Sharp collected it and passed it on to Percy Grainger. Grainger then arranged it for piano in 1918. It became one of Grainger’s best-known works and brought him great success.
The song was given the title English Country Garden by Jimmie Rodgers, who sung it in 1962 with the lyrics shown below:
“How many kinds of sweet flowers grow in an English country garden? We’ll tell you now of some that we know; those we miss you’ll surely pardon Daffodils, heart’s ease and flox, meadowsweet and lady smocks Gentain, lupine and tall hollyhocks, Roses, foxgloves, snowdrops, blue forget-me-nots In an English country garden”
There are alternative, less flowery, words too. As children in England, Carla and her friends used to sing:
“What do you do if you can’t find a loo, in an English country garden? Pull down your pants and exterminate the ants, in an English country garden”
Our third attempt – not perfect, but improving!
We had fun playing through this new arrangement for 12 handbells. Our thanks go to J.C. for helping us out during his short visit to Michigan. The video was only our third attempt at the piece, and we hadn’t quite mastered the middle section. However, with a bit more rehearsal time, this piece shouldn’t be too challenging.
Would you like to play Country Gardens?
If you’d like to play Country Gardens, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
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!
