The Zeeland Community Band Christmas Concert will take place on Monday, December 12th, 2022. Holland-based handbell duo Larry and Carla will once again be joining with the band, to add the music of handbells to the performance.
About the performers
The Zeeland Community Band (ZCB) is a group dedicated to providing opportunities for the adult musician to rehearse and perform with others that share a passion for music and community outreach. They welcome any musicians with at least a high-school-level proficiency in their chosen instrument.
ZCB director Rose Wiersma earned a Bachelor of Music with an emphasis in music education, music theory, and clarinet performance. She gained her Master of Music degree as a Woodwind Specialist from Western Michigan University. Her advanced studies included Michigan State University and a summer studying in London. She has directed bands at Coopersville Area Public Schools and Grand Valley State University as a woodwind instructor.
Larry and Carla are West Michigan’s smallest handbell choir! They are available to perform handbell duets for wedding ceremonies, worship and memorial services, and Christmas and holiday events.
The Zeeland Community Band Christmas concert will feature a handbell duet prelude by Larry and Carla. This popular annual community event will include a variety of Christmas and holiday music to help you celebrate the season!
Free Admission is free, but donations are appreciated.
The Monday Musical Club is a non-profit organisation dedicated to music education and promotion of creative and performing arts. Based in St. Joseph, Michigan, they hold a wide variety of education events and music performances. We were excited to be asked to present a shared concert with our friends Gary and Martha Matthews!
About Gary and Martha Matthews
Gary and Martha also live in Holland, and they’re a talented couple! Gary studied organ, music education, and sacred music, and holds a doctorate in Worship Studies. He served as Pastor of Worship and the Arts at Highland Park Baptist Church in Southfield, MI, and at Christ Memorial Church in Holland, MI. He’s a published composer, and has been performing for more than forty years, with piano, organ, trumpet and voice.
Martha holds a Bachelors in Music Education and a Masters in Flute Performance. She has played principal flute with Florida Symphonic Pops, Florida Wind Symphony, Gold Coast Opera, Gold Coast Ballet and the Washington Idaho Symphony. Martha directs the Kalamazoo Ringers, and is a sought-after handbell clinician. In concert with Gary, she plays flute, whistles, bell tree, and piano.
A concert with handbells, flute, piano, trumpet, and more!
We held our shared concert at First Congregational Church of St. Joseph. This is a beautiful sanctuary for a music performance! It was a treat for the four of us to be able to perform together. We’d spent most of our summer at our cottage near Petoskey, and Gary and Martha had been in Holland. Planning a concert and rehearsing is a challenge when you’re in different towns! Thanks to the power of email, and our individual rehearsals, we made it work.
Our program included music on a variety of instruments, including handbells (of course!) Gary and Martha opened the concert with a piece for piano and trumpet, and we continued with a couple of our favorite handbell duets. We also enjoyed the opportunity to get together as a quartet to perform some pieces – including Larry’s infamous arrangement of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing that the four of us had previously played for one of the Kalamazoo Ringers’ online Christmas concerts. We all played Blessed Assurance together, with a brand-new flute part that Larry had written specially for this concert. It was fun to find that some of the audience hadn’t seen handbells played in our 4-in-hand style before. We talked to audience members afterwards, and answered questions about our technique and the way we move.
Here’s the full program!
We enjoyed listening to Gary and Martha’s pieces, particularly Brent Olstad’s I Love to Tell the Story. Martha’s flute-played was enthralling to hear, and the audience clearly loved this piece. We finished the concert with an extra surprise – Larry’s lively arrangement of Ding Dong, Merrily on High. This is another arrangement for handbells, piano and flute, and it makes a perfect ending for a concert.
Our thanks go to the Monday Musical Club for inviting us to share our music in concert, and to everyone who came to listen. We hope to have the opportunity to perform in concert with Gary and Martha again someday!
If you’d like to provide an opportunity for us to perform in concert with Gary and Martha again, or you’d like to host a handbell duet performance, please get in touch with us, and we’ll talk more!
It’s hard to believe that the 2022 Bay View Week of Handbells was the 11th year we’ve attended this evening together! Of course, that would have happened sooner, if the pandemic hadn’t happened. The 2020 and 2021 Week of Handbells events were cancelled because of Covid-19, so it was a particularly good feeling to get back to it this year.
Our history with the Bay View Week of Handbells
We attended this annual event for the first time in August 2010, when we were still in our long-distance relationship. Carla flew to Chicago from England, and Larry flew in from California. We met in person for the very first time at Chicago O’Hare, and took the short flight to Traverse City together. Until then, we’d only ever communicated online, via Facebook messages, so it was exciting for us to be able to see each other in “real life” and spend time together.
After the 2010 Week of Handbells, we flew back to England and California, and spent a very long year apart. Finally, we were able to meet again at the 2011 Week of Handbells, where we celebrated our engagement with cupcakes at the Monday evening reception. Then we were separated again, returned to England and California, and went through all the challenges of the K-1 fiancée visa process. When the U.S. visa was approved, we were able to make plans to close the distance permanently. Planning the trip was complicated, but we made it all coincide with the 2012 Week of Handbells, and after the event was over, we flew to California to make our wedding plans. Apart from the two years when the event was cancelled, we’ve attended together every year since.
The 2022 Bay View Week of Handbells
This year’s Week of Handbells was a bit different for us, for an important reason; we now have our own Bay View cottage! We bought this Victorian cottage in October 2019, when we became members of the Bay View Association. It was built around 1887, and is a quirky little place, with uneven floors and some interesting features!
We appreciated being able to be “at home” between rehearsals, and to relax in our own place at the end of the day. In previous years, we’ve stayed in hotels, and also rented another of the Victorian cottages on campus. Our cottage is at the bottom of the hill, so we got plenty of exercise walking to and from rehearsals in the auditorium! We also had a steady stream of visitors, and enjoyed giving cottage tours to our handbell friends.
The 2022 event
Once again, Larry had the opportunity to play the aluminum bass bells, in the Deep Pit. Carla played AB5, as coordinator of the Position 7 team. Rehearsals went smoothly this year, and everyone was thankful to be back after the long break. We also heard that Bay View Association members were happy to see the return of the bell ringers, and eagerly awaited the Thursday evening concert.
The repertoire for the 2022 Week of Handbells was as follows:
Festive Praises(Fred Gramann) Tales of the Great Water (Sandra Eithun) Finale (Widor, arr. Fred Gramann) The Entertainer (Joplin, transcribed by Paul Kingbury) – available from Choraegus Intrepid (Jason Krug) Change Ring Prelude on ‘Fred Gramann’ (Jantz Black) Aurora (Matthew Compton) Aria (Donald Allured) São Paulo (Elizabeth Peters) The Sound of Silence (Paul Simon, arr. Matthew Compton) Bulwarkana (Alex Guebert) Puttin’ on the Ritz (Berlin, arr. Hart Morris) The Lord Bless You and Keep You (Peter Lutkin)
There were five winners of the Donald E. Allured Composition Award at this year’s concert. Was this a record? Sandra Eithun’s Tales of the Great Water was performed for the first time at the 2022 Week of Handbells, and we were all happy that she came to the concert to hear it!
Catherine McMichael, Sandra Eithun, Larry Sue, Alex Guebert and Matthew Compton
As usual, the week was a very busy one. Rehearsals are long and intense, and there isn’t a lot of spare time, although we always appreciate the Bay View sunsets, the opportunity to gather with friends on the Wednesday “evening off”, and the Bay View Memorial Garden, where the flowers never disappoint.
What’s next?
Now that we’ve put away our 2022 Week of Handbells music, we’re moving on to more duet performances, writing and playing new music, and preparing for the holiday season. We’ll still be spending as much time as we can at Bay View – driving back and forth between Holland and Petoskey – until the time comes to close up the cottage for the winter months. Before too long, it will be time to sign up for the 2023 event – and we’re already looking forward to it!
Holland-based handbell duo Larry and Carla will be returning to play handbells at Central United Methodist Church in, Muskegon. They will play several of their 8-bell duets during the morning worship service.
Larry and Carla last played handbells at Central United Methodist Church in November 2020, during online services. Before that, they played in August 2019, which seems like a long time ago! It’s exciting to be back to in-person worship services at this beautiful church.
Handbells will be featured in the prelude, offertory and postlude. You’ll hear a lively arrangement of Holy Manna, their arrangement of David Evans’ beautiful Lucerna Laudoniae (For the Beauty of the Earth), the popular Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing, and the lively hymn To God Be the Glory.
Handbells make a beautiful addition to a worship service, wedding ceremony or memorial service. A handbell duo takes up less room than a traditional full-size handbell choir; ideal for venues where space is limited. If you’d like to find out more about booking Larry and Carla to play for your event or worship service, please get in touch. Larry and Carla are now accepting bookings for Christmas 2022 and beyond. We recommend early booking for summer weddings, and for Christmas and holiday events, but can often accommodate last-minute requests too. If in doubt, ask!
The 2021 Kalamazoo Ringers Christmas Concert is tomorrow!
We’re excited about this concert! On a Winter’s Night will be streamed on the Kalamazoo Ringers’ Facebook page at 4pm EST. We were all disappointed not to be able to rehearse and prepare our usual Christmas concert at Grace Harbor. Instead, we cautiously decided to gather only in small groups for this Christmas season – and it turned out to be a lot of fun! The concert is an interesting mixture of handbell solos, duets and small ensembles – with a lot of Choraegus music!
We’re particularly excited to share our 5-octave arrangement of Of the Father’s Love Begotten. This is a new piece that we haven’t published yet. It will be available to download from Choraegus in May next year. There’s also an exciting arrangement of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, where we’re joined by Martha and Gary Matthews on flute and piano. There’s a nice mixture of small ensemble pieces, from Jason Krug’s beautiful Coventry, played on bell tree, to the pure fun of Valerie Stephenson’s Caroler’s Hoedown… and if you stay tuned until the end, we’ll even show you some outtakes!
The Kalamazoo Ringers Christmas Concert will be live on the Kalamazoo Ringers Facebook page at 4:00pm on Sunday, December 19. The video will be available to watch on Facebook and YouTube afterwards.
We have high hopes of presenting an in-person concert next spring!
Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken is our most recent 8-bell arrangement. It’s an 18th-century English hymn, written by John Newton, who also wrote Amazing Grace. The tune used for this arrangement is Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, written by Joseph Haydn – most often referred to in hymnals as AUSTRIA.
More information about this arrangement
Our 8-bell arrangement of Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken is suitable for 2-4 ringers. We demonstrate it as a 4-in-hand duet, but there’s no requirement to use 4-in-hand. There’s no bell-sharing, and no accidentals to pick up mid-piece, so if you have a small ensemble, this piece can be played with no need for tables or foam pads. Perfect for social distancing!
How to purchase the sheet music
Sheet Music for Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken (standard version) is available to purchase, download and print from Choraegus. There’s also a Surprisingly Easy™ arrangement of this hymn – so you have a choice! Purchasing either of these arrangements gives you permission to print up to four copies for your handbell group – so don’t pay for more copies than you need! Your purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details. Please remember to mention the title and arranger of the piece on video-sharing sites, social media and any printed materials. We appreciate your help in spreading the word about Choraegus handbell music!
Choraegus handbell music is designed to come to you as a PDF file, which you’ll need to download. You’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail.
If you haven’t purchased music online from Choraegus before, we recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this guide to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. If someone has asked us a question even once, it will be there, along with the answer. Please contact us if you don’t find the information you need, and we’ll be happy to help.
PS If you missed the outtake video of Still, Still, Still that we shared on our Facebook page, now might be a good time to watch it! We apologise for the advertising on our YouTube videos. We didn’t ask for it, and don’t make any money from it. It’s one of the reasons for our gradual switch to Vimeo!
Ring in the Christmas season with Holland-based handbell duo Larry and Carla! We’ll be presenting a program of Christmas handbell duets at the Georgetown Connections Senior Center in Jenison. We’ll talk about the history of our instruments, and how we play them, and will share traditional Christmas and holiday music from around the world. Audience members will also have the chance to ask all their burning questions about handbells!
What better way to ring in the Christmas season than by listening to carols played with bells? This is a private event for patrons of this senior community.
If you’d like to book Larry and Carla to play handbell duets for your event, you can find more information on our website. The traditional sound of handbell music is perfect for creating a festive atmosphere at a holiday event. We can also play beautiful music for worship services during Advent and Christmas. We always recommend early booking for the Christmas and holiday season, but can sometimes accommodate last-minute requests too. If you miss us this year, there’s always the option of booking early for next year! If you need more information, or have any questions about our availability, please get in touch!
Here’s a Christmas handbell duet that could be perfect for anyone looking for something unusual this holiday season. The melody is a traditional Normandy carol tune that was first published with the Away in a Manger lyrics in 1911. It’s a change from the Murray or Kirkpatrick tunes usually heard with this carol, and we played it for the Kalamazoo Ringers’ online Home for Christmas concert last year!
More information about Away in a Manger
This arrangement is for bells from D5 to A6, with piano accompaniment. It’s not difficult to play, and there’s no requirement for traveling 4-in-hand or any advanced solo-ringing techniques. A piano accompaniment mp3 is available to download separately if you don’t have an accompanist, or if you’d like to practise on your own. The sheet music for this Christmas handbell duet is available to download from Choraegus.
Buying Choraegus handbell music
When you purchase Away in a Manger from the Choraegus site, the music score will come to you as a PDF file. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. When you’ve downloaded your music, your one-time payment entitles you to print sufficient copies for your group. If you prefer to split the parts between more than two people, that’s okay; you don’t need to pay for extra copies, as long as you’re only using the music for one ensemble.
Please read our licensing agreement for full information about this. If you’re new to buying music from Choraegus, we recommend our step-by-step guide. We designed this to take you through the process in a (we hope) stress-free way!
Purchasing this arrangement gives you no-fuss permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and online video-sharing. Please take some time to read about what you’re allowed to do with Choraegus handbell music. In these times of live-streaming and online concerts, it’s particularly important that we all understand and follow the laws concerning performance licensing and copyright.
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing Choraegus handbell music, please look at our Frequently-Asked Questions. If you don’t find the information you’re looking for, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
Handbell Happenings – at the Bay View Association!
As you’ll probably be aware, the 2021 Bay View Week of Handbells concert had to be canceled/postponed because of COVID-19 concerns. An event of this type and size has to be planned months in advance. With the uncertain nature of the virus, travel restrictions, and the need to keep the musicians and audience safe, the wisest decision was to postpone the event for another year. However, some of the usual participants are making plans for a small gathering in the big events tent at Bay View instead.
Handbell duo (and Bay View Association members) Larry and Carla will play handbell duets, from around 3:30pm in the big tent near the John M. Hall Auditorium on Thursday, August 19th. You’re welcome to come and listen, see the bells at close range, and ask us any burning questions about handbells.
A little later, some of the ringers who usually participate in the annual Week of Handbells will be joining us. From around 5:00pm, we’ll all play some handbell music together. This part of the event is designed primarily as a gathering for the handbell people, but anyone is welcome to drop by at any point to meet the ringers and listen to the music. It won’t be the same as the usual annual handbell concert, because the music will be completely unrehearsed, but it’s a chance to see and hear handbell ringing in an informal setting at Bay View this summer. We all hope to be able to participate in the usual handbell concert in August 2022!
We’ll be observing COVID-19 safety measures for this event. Please bring a mask with you, and be aware of the need for social distancing where possible.
Any questions?
Please contact us if you need more information, or have any questions about this event. You’re welcome to come and chat with us, if you see us on the porch at the corner of Woodland and Pine!
Free
The Events Tent, 1715 Encampment Ave, Petoskey, MI 49770
The Events Tent, 1715 Encampment Ave Petoskey,
Michigan
49770United States+ Google Map
Enjoy the traditional sounds of Christmas at Hudsonville Library! Michigan handbell duo Larry and Carla will be back for the third time with a program of handbell duets. Ringing in the Holidays will be the season finale of the library’s Friends Present series for 2021.
Larry and Carla are West Michigan’s smallest handbell choir. They met on a website for handbell musicians when Larry lived in California and Carla lived in England. Their shared love of handbells led to a 3-year long-distance relationship, and eventually to a visa process and marriage. They moved from California to Holland in the summer of 2016.
Larry and Carla will again be demonstrating the art of playing handbells using the traditional “four in hand” technique. Their program will include some well-known carols, as well as some less-familiar holiday tunes from around the world. You’ll hear music played on a set of of handchimes, and a restored set of antique Taylor bells from England. Larry and Carla will talk about the history of these beautiful instruments, and the techniques involved in playing them. There will also be an opportunity to ask questions.
You’ll be able to enjoy refreshments and social time as we celebrate Christmas at Hudsonville Library. We look forward to welcoming you to this popular annual event, presented by the Friends of the Gary Byker Memorial Library.
Free Free to attend; a donation to the Friends of the Library is appreciated
