We were excited to be invited to Riverside, Illinois, to give a handbell duet concert as part of Ascension Lutheran Church’s 2025-26 concert series. We don’t travel out of Michigan for performances often, so it’s always fun when we can do it!
Riverside isn’t far from Chicago; about a 3-hour drive from where we live. We drove there on the Saturday, and our first task was to find the church, tucked away among the houses.
A warm welcome at Ascension Lutheran Church
Ascension Lutheran Church turned out to be the perfect concert venue for us. The people are friendly and welcoming, the building is beautiful, inside and out, and it’s just a lovely space for sharing music. It can be daunting to think about presenting an entire concert with just 8-bell music, but we do appreciate the opportunity to share our handbell duets with an audience. We decided to take our handchimes with us for this concert in Riverside, for a change of mood that keeps things interesting. We were happy to be able to collaborate with two talented musicians from Chicago for several accompanied pieces too. The first of those was Shall We Gather at the River. Here’s a video from our rehearsal. This was the first time we’d played the piece through with pianist Paula Gelpi. It was also the first time Paula had heard handbells!
We played a variety of 8-bell duets, including Greensleeves, Calliope House, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise, and Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Attende Domine proved to be a nice addition on handchimes. It seemed particularly appropriate for a concert during Lent, as it’s also known as the Lent Prose. We also included one 6-bell piece – Hyfrydol – which is one of the most challenging of our 6-bell arrangements. This piece is fast, and takes a lot of concentration. It also helps to have a skilled pianist, of course, and Paula Gelpi took it all in her stride. She took off faster than we’d expected during our first run-through before the concert, and we were glad we’d spent a lot of time working on this piece. Through gritted teeth, we kept up, and slowed it down ever-so-slightly for the actual concert.
Blessed Assurance
For the final piece of the concert, the talented Christie Miller joined us on clarinet. Here’s a rehearsal video of Blessed Assurance. It’s always a treat for us to be able to include accompanied pieces in our performances. We rehearse with mp3 practice tracks on a phone, but being able to collaborate with talented musicians is so much better! Larry originally arranged Blessed Assurance for handbells, piano and flute, but when we found out that Christie was available to join us, Larry adapted the score for clarinet too! Both options are now available, for anyone else interested in playing this arrangement:
Thanks to all at Ascension Lutheran Church!
Our thanks go to Dan McDaniel, Director of Music, and to Mary C, for the warm welcome to Ascension Lutheran Church. We’re also grateful to Paula and Christie for sharing their talents so generously with us. Thank you to everyone who came to our concert!
