December 9 at 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm EST
Handbell duo Larry and Carla will be playing Christmas handbell music at the Salvation Army Red Kettle at D&W Fresh Market in Holland, Michigan!
Christmas Handbell Duets at D&W Fresh Market, Holland
Tag Archives: 2019
Christmas Handbells at D&W Fresh Market, Holland
December 2 at 10:00 am – 12:00 pm EST
Handbell duo Larry and Carla will be playing Christmas handbell music at the Salvation Army Red Kettle at D&W Fresh Market in Holland, Michigan!
Christmas Bells at the Salvation Army Red Kettle
November 30 at 10:00 am – 12:00 pm EST
Handbell duo Larry and Carla will be playing Christmas handbell music at the Salvation Army Red Kettle at D&W Fresh Market in Holland, Michigan!
It Is Well With My Soul – a Handbell Duet Concert
Before we launch into rehearsals for Advent and Christmas, we have just one more performance to do! Tomorrow we’ll be driving across Michigan to Gregory, to play in the morning service at Southwest Church of the Nazarene. In the afternoon we’ll be presenting a handbell duet concert of hymns and beautiful melodies to soothe your soul and lift your spirits. We’ll be playing well-known hymns such as Holy Manna, It Is Well with my Soul, and Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. We’ll also be playing some traditional pieces from Scotland, Ireland, Holland and Japan. We might even sneak in a couple of Advent and Christmas carols, because that season is fast-approaching! There will also be a chance to ask us questions about our music and our instruments.
Admission to the concert is free, with an opportunity for a free-will offering. We’d love to see you there!
Would you like us to play handbells at your church?
We have a wide repertoire of handbell duets suitable for worship, or for concerts. We invite you to read about our handbell ministry, and look at independent reviews of our performances. Please contact us if you’d like us to play a handbell duet concert at your church. We’re based in Holland, Michigan, but we’re happy to travel nationwide or internationally.
Christmas Handbell Duet Program in Jenison (Private Event)
December 17 at 2:00 pm – 2:45 pm EST
West Michigan handbell duo Larry and Carla will present a program of Christmas handbell music for residents and guests at a senior living community in Jenison. This is a private event.
A Minor Crash – at the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells
We’re thrilled to be able to share this video of Larry’s original composition A Minor Crash, recorded at the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells concert. This piece is fun to play! You can even see some of the musicians dancing along, which is exciting to see at a handbell performance!
A Minor Crash is written for 5-8 octaves of handbells and optional handchimes. An additional cajón part is available. The cajón part is written by Alex Guebert, who also plays it in the concert video. It’s a Level 4 piece, with some interesting challenges for bass handbell enthusiasts. There’s also an alternative simplified section for less-adventurous performers!
Sheet music for A Minor Crash
If you’d like to play this piece, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from our music site, Choraegus.
Many thanks to Pierpont Productions
Our thanks go to Pierpont Productions, who graciously allowed us to share the video from the 2019 Bay View Week of Handbells concert. They make a wonderful recording of the Bay View handbell concert each year. CDs and videos of previous concerts are available. If you’d like one, contact us, and we’ll put you in touch!
New Handbell Music – De Drie Koningen
Looking for something a bit unusual for your Christmas handbell performance or worship service? Here’s our latest eight-bell arrangement! It’s a sixteenth-century Flemish carol called De Drie Koningen (The Three Kings). This carol is suitable either for Epiphany or Christmas. We recorded the video last January, before we took down our Christmas tree!
Would you like to play this 8-bell piece?
If you’d like to play this arrangement, the sheet music is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus.
If you’re new to buying our music online, we strongly recommend that you read the licensing agreement first. Please note in particular that music from Choraegus is designed to be downloaded and printed by the customer. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.
If you’re new to Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide! We designed this to help you navigate the purchasing process in a stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please look at our Frequently-Asked Questions for more assistance. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
We hope you’ll enjoy playing our music!
Wrapping up the Summer, and Looking Forward!
In the weeks since we came back from the Bay View Week of Handbells, we’ve appreciated the opportunity to focus on our handbell ministry. We’ve very much enjoyed being a part of worship services at several West Michigan churches. Now we’re wrapping up the summer, and reflecting on the last few months’ activities.
Just after we returned from Bay View, we made our first visit to Muskegon Central United Methodist Church. We played prelude, offertory and special music in their traditional Sunday morning service.
This summer we also played in the morning service at Christ Memorial Church, here in Holland. We’ve previously played Christmas music there, so it was fun to go back and be part of a summer worship service! We also enjoyed the opportunity to attend a rehearsal and work with their handbell choir on bass and treble handbell techniques, as they prepare for the upcoming season.
We also played duets in the morning service at our home church, Third Reformed, here in Holland. Larry had the chance to do something different too — and he enjoyed playing the cajón with the praise chorus!
We’ve also been part of the Downtown Holland Street Performer Series; our third summer at this popular event.
Now that we’re wrapping up the summer, what’s next for us? We’re looking forward to giving a program of handbell duets at a senior community party in a few days’ time. After that, we’ll be preparing for a Sunday afternoon concert in Gregory, Michigan at the end of October.
The holiday season is always our favorite time of year. Is it too early to mention Christmas? We’re still taking bookings, so let us know if you need us!
“It is Well with my Soul” – a Handbell Duet Concert
October 27 at 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm EDT
Larry and Carla will be presenting a concert of handbell duets at Gregory Southwest Church of the Nazarene.
Admission is free, and no advance booking is required. A free-will offering will be collected at the concert.
Our 10th Year at the Bay View Week of Handbells
It’s been over a week since we came back from our trip to the Petoskey area for our 10th year at the Bay View Week of Handbells. Life is getting back to normal, and we have lots of great memories from our tenth year at the event!
Bay View Week of Handbells is part of our history!
Taking part in the Bay View Week of Handbells has become a highlight of our year. We attended the event for the first time in August 2010, when we were still in our long-distance relationship. Carla flew to Chicago from England, Larry flew in from California. We met in person for the very first time, before taking the short flight to Traverse City together. Having only previously communicated in Facebook messages, it was exciting for us to spend time together in person, and to discover that we actually did like each other in “real life”, as well as online!
After another year apart, we met again at the 2011 Week of Handbells. We celebrated our engagement in Evelyn Hall at the Monday evening reception. The following year was a busy one for us as we dealt with the challenges of the U.S. fiancée visa process. Finally, we were able to close the distance in August 2012. We timed everything carefully, to coincide with that year’s Week of Handbells! Larry flew to England, then we flew back together from London to Chicago. Next, we flew to Traverse City, then drove to Bay View for the week of rehearsals and concert. After the event was over, we were able to take a flight to California and begin our life together.
Since then, we’ve participated in the Week of Handbells every August. The event is very special to us for many reasons. For a start, the standard of musicianship is very high. Participants are required to arrive at the event fully prepared. That means we can use the rehearsal time not to learn notes, but to work on expression, playing as a single ensemble, and the finer points of preparing for a concert to a high professional standard. It’s a lot of fun to work on challenging music under the baton of an experienced and highly-skilled director. It’s also good to know that the Thursday evening’s public concert will be enjoyed by so many people! Bay View has also given us the opportunity to meet with friends, and to make new ones, as handbell musicians arrive from many different cities to take part each year.
The years have gone quickly since our first experience of the Bay View Week of Handbells! We’ve been able to learn so much from participating in the event. Larry has played the aluminum bass handbells every year since 2010. He’s appreciated being part of the “Deep Pit” team; a group of five musicians who are highly skilled at playing these bells. Carla had another opportunity to be a Position Captain this year. She was responsible for supporting a team of ringers and starting early with preparing for the event. Together they worked out solutions and strategies for tricky passages in the music.
It’s been several years since we made our Big Move from California to Michigan. Now that we live in Holland, it takes us less than five hours to drive to Bay View. That’s been an advantage to us, because we’ve been able to make a few day-trips to Bay View outside of the Week of Handbells, just for the sheer joy of being there! We love being by the lake, and even going in the lake, as we hunt for Petoskey stones to bring home and polish. The Petoskey stone is the official Michigan State Stone. It’s a fossilised coral – Hexagonaria percarinata – that lived in the warm Michigan waters around 350 million years ago. Polishing Petoskey stones (using wet sandpaper) is the perfect activity for cold winter evenings at home in Holland!
We stayed in one of the pretty cottages on the Bay View campus again this year, and it’s wonderful to be close to the rehearsal venue. It’s fun to feel part of the Bay View community, even if it’s just for a short while. Bay View has some of the best sunsets we’ve ever seen. Besides, what other handbell event gives you the opportunity to finish a tiring day of rehearsals, and see scenes like these?
The concert on Thursday evening was exciting for us this year, particularly as we were performing one of Larry’s original compositions – A Minor Crash. Pierpont Video Productions made a professional recording of the concert, so we hope to have a video to share at some point in the near future! We chatted with one of the Bay View Association members on the day after the concert. He referred to Larry as “the Crash Guy”, which made us laugh! Other highlights of the concert repertoire were: Drive, an original composition by Alex Guebert, Beach Boys Medley, arranged by Linda Boatright, and Hart Morris’s challenging arrangement of I Got Rhythm.
Saying goodbye is easier these days
We’re always sorry to have to leave Bay View when the Week of Handbells is over. However, now that we live in Michigan, the goodbyes are slightly easier. We know that we’re only a few hours away, so there’s no longer any reason for us to wait a whole year to return!
As we put away this year’s Bay View music and start focusing on our duet performances for the upcoming season, we’ll be setting our hopes on being able to return to the Week of Handbells in August 2020!
© 2019 Larry and Carla Sue
