clinician Archives | Larry and Carla

We very much enjoyed our trip to Ashland, Oregon for the Siskiyou Summit Handbell Conference. We love long road-trips, and the drive from Mountain View up to Ashland is always a fun one.

Larry was this year’s guest clinician/director, and Carla taught classes on British-style four-in-hand ringing. We both had a busy weekend! We performed a selection of our 8-bell duets for event participants, at the Friday evening Showcase Concert. Saturday involved a full day of massed-ringing rehearsals and classes, followed by a well-attended public concert.

Here’s a photo from one of Carla’s classes, where participants were enthusiastic about learning to play 4-in-hand the British way! This is a particular challenge for anyone who hasn’t attempted to play two bells in one hand before. It’s also fairly mind-blowing for people who usually use the ring-and-knock style of playing 4-in-hand. Switching to a whole new method is a tricky thing to do!

Siskiyou Summit Handbell Conference - 4-in-hand class

Larry very much enjoyed the opportunity to direct this massed-ringing event. We enjoyed the individual group’s performances too!

Our thanks go to Diane Barnes, the event organiser. We’re also thankful to the musicians who worked so hard to make the Siskiyou Summit Handbell Conference a success. You can find more photos from the weekend are on our Facebook page!

The SECC Handbell Festival was a great success. More than a hundred skilled young handbell musicians attended, and worked very hard to prepare for the concert. Larry had the privilege of being their clinician for the event.

We were both so impressed by the skill and dedication of the young musicians at this event. The choirs arrived well-prepared, and stayed focused throughout the rehearsals. Their individual performances were of a very high standard, and they performed the massed ringing pieces very well. If you’d like to see some of the highlights from the SECC Handbell Festival, here’s a video with excerpts from the rehearsals and the evening concert. The concert featured music by Arnold Sherman, Kevin McChesney, William Gross, Jason Krug, Linda McKechnie, Tim Waugh, Michael Glasgow, Catherine McMichael, Matthew Compton and our very own Larry Sue. A snippet from our performance of our eight-bell duet “Great is Thy Faithfulness” appears about 18 minutes into the video.

We also very much enjoyed this performance of Matthew Compton’s arrangement of “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?”, by Bellissimo, a group from Redlands Advent Academy. Here’s a video from the event: