Larry and Carla will present a demonstration of handbell duets at a reception with coffee and snacks, for guests at the 2019 Great Lakes Regional Convention of the American Guild of Organists. This event will take place at Third Reformed Church of Holland, at 9:00am and again at 10:00am.
Larry and Carla will be performing handbell duets as part of an evening concert program in Holland, Michigan.
Here’s our latest 8-bell piece – Botany Bay!
“Farewell to old England for ever,
Farewell to my rum coes as well,
Farewell to the well-known Old Bailey
Where I used for to cut such a swell.
Botany Bay first became popular in theatre shows of the late 1800s, in London, England and Melbourne, Australia. However, its roots may be from an even earlier time! The song describes the period in the late 18th and 19th centuries, when many British convicts were deported to penal colonies in Australia. We have another 8-bell piece about this period of history – Moreton Bay.
If you’d like to play our arrangement of Botany Bay, the sheet music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
Please remember that Choraegus handbell music is designed to be downloaded. You’ll be responsible for printing the music at home, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. If you haven’t purchased music from Choraegus before, we recommend our step-by-step guide!
Purchasing this 8-bell piece entitles you to pay once, and print up to 4 copies for your group. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please don’t pay for more copies than you need!
If you have any questions about buying or playing Choraegus handbell music, we have some Frequently-Asked Questions that might help. If you don’t find the answers you need, please contact us!
Our latest 8-bell arrangement is the beautiful hymn tune Morning Song. You might also know it as The King Shall Come When Morning Dawns.
We recently performed this piece for the first time at the opening concert for the Handbell Musicians of America Area 5 Spring Festival on Mackinac Island. We’ll be sharing photos and information about that event soon!
Here’s a video of us, recorded a few months ago, rehearsing this piece for the concert:
We’ve enjoyed working on this piece, and think it’s set to become one of our favorites for playing in church. If you’d like to play Morning Song, the sheet music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
Choraegus handbell music is designed to be downloaded and printed at home. That means you’ll be responsible for the printing, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. If you haven’t purchased our handbell music before, we recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this to help make the process stress-free!
Purchasing this 8-bell piece gives you permission to print up to 4 copies for your group. You only need to pay once, so please don’t pay for more copies than you need! See our licensing agreement for more details.
If you have any questions about buying or playing our handbell 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!
Christmas bells!
Larry and Carla will be presenting a program of Christmas music, and talking about the history and techniques involved in playing handbells. This is a private event in Holland, Michigan.
“Thou hidden source of calm repose,
thou all-sufficient love divine,
my help and refuge from my foes,
secure i am, if thou art mine:
and lo, from sin, and grief, and shame,
I hide me, Jesus, in thy name.”
This is an 18th century hymn by Charles Wesley. We hadn’t heard it until very recently! The tune is ST PETERSBURG. If you’re looking for an unusual hymn for your worship service, this could work well. It’s suitable for 3-6 ringers, and it’s available in two bell ranges – either C5-G6 or F5-C7.
Thanks to J.C for joining us for this recording during his recent visit to Michigan!
Sheet music for this new 12-bell arrangement is available to purchase and download from Choraegus. You only need to pay once, and you can print up to 6 copies for your group.
We ask you to read our licensing agreement, and if you’re new to buying our music online, we recommend our step-by-step guide.
If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, you might like to check our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the answers you’re looking for, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help!
It’s that time of year when people start contacting us to ask about handbell music for Lent, Holy Week, Good Friday, and Easter. Here are a few suggestions!
For full handbell choir, we have an original composition called “Meditation“, with the alternative title “Lenten Piece”. It’s a thoughtful and contemplative piece for 2-5 octaves of handbells. This demonstration video is by Tintabulations Handbell Ensemble.
This piece is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
If you don’t have a full handbell choir to work with, we have music arranged for twelve or eight bells too. For Lent, Holy Week or Good Friday, you could look at our twelve-bell arrangement of “There is a Fountain“, shown in the rehearsal video below. This and other twelve-bell hymns are available from Choraegus.
We have lots of eight-bell pieces suitable for this time of year. You can find all of our published eight-bell hymn arrangements in a repertoire list on this website. Sheet music is available to download and print from Choraegus. As an example, we have a straightforward but effective arrangement of “O Sacred Head“, suitable for 2-4 ringers.
There are many wonderful hymns for Easter. Our arrangement of “Come Christians, Join to Sing” has a version for eight bells with organ accompaniment by T. Paul Rosas, who played it with us at Los Altos United Methodist Church on Easter Sunday in 2016.
Thank you for considering our handbell music. If you need more information, check out some frequently-asked questions, and contact us if you don’t find what you’re looking for!
Today we took an exciting look back at one of our adventures from last summer. We had an opportunity to collaborate with internationally acclaimed Natalia Paruz. the Saw Lady! Natalia is New York City musician who specialises in playing the musical saw. She’s well-known for her NY subway performances!
We were all in New York City to participate in a concert given by Campanelli Handbell Ensemble, who were visiting the USA on tour from their home country of Estonia. Natalia was playing her musical saw for the solo part in Susan T. Nelson’s beautiful “Elegy”. We were playing the handbell duet part in a brand new composition “Mu Süda Ärka Üles“. After rehearsing with Campanelli and their director Inna Lai, we still had some time before the concert. We decided to read through our eight-bell arrangement of “Amazing Grace” together. This is the result:
Somewhere in our archives, we have recordings of a couple more pieces we played that afternoon, and we’ll share those soon! We very much enjoyed our musical collaboration with Natalia, and hope that someday we’ll have the opportunity to do it again!
Here’s our latest 12-bell piece – an arrangement of the popular hymn How Great Thou Art. Thanks to J.C, who came to visit us for a few days last month and was happy to play through some new stuff with us.
This piece proved to be fun to play, and came together surprisingly quickly. As with all our 12-bell pieces, we’ve made it available in two versions – one for the traditional twelve-bell range C5-G6, and one for F5-C7, so you can pick the one that suits your group.
If you’d like to play How Great Thou Art, it’s available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
When you buy music from Choraegus, you’ll receive instructions to download the file as a PDF. That means you’ll be responsible for printing the music at home, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Please read our licensing agreement for all the details. If you haven’t bought music from us before, you might like to read our step-by-step guide. We designed this to help make the purchase process stress-free!
Your payment gives you permission to print out up to 6 copies of this arrangement for your group. Don’t pay for more copies than you need!
If you have any questions about buying and playing our music, please contact us, and we’ll be happy to help!
We regret that we’re currently unable to offer gift vouchers for the Choraegus site, because of a technical issue that’s outside our control. Thank you to everyone who purchased them! We do hope to be able to bring them back at some future date.
We’re excited to introduce something new on our music site – gift vouchers! You can now purchase and download a gift voucher for $10, $20, $50 or $100, give it to a friend, and let them choose their own music from the wide selection of pieces available on our site. It could be an ideal Christmas or birthday gift for the handbell musician in your life!
There are so many handbell titles on Choraegus that it’s sometimes difficult to choose. We have solo handbell arrangements, music for just 6 bells and piano, 8-bell music… all the way up to full-choir music for 5-8 octaves. There’s straightforward music for beginning or improving ensembles. You’ll also find pieces that will challenge even the most skilled and experienced handbell ensembles. There’s something for everyone!
Don’t forget The Bass Ringer’s Notebook (Second Edition), which is also a great choice for any bass handbell musician or aspiring bucket-slinger. Unlike the gift vouchers and music scores, the book isn’t a downloadable file; it’s an actual book which we will lovingly package up and send to you – so order a copy soon if you need it delivered in time for Christmas!
If you have any questions about Choraegus gift vouchers, or about our music in general, please get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help.
