Since 2012, we’ve supported the Salvation Army in the San Francisco Bay Area by playing our handbell duets during their annual Red Kettle campaign. Now that we’re no longer living in California, we’re pleased to be able to help with the fundraising at the Red Kettle here in Holland, Michigan instead.
At the Salvation Army Red Kettle in Mountain View, California last year
This holiday season, we’ll be playing Christmas carols and holiday music at D&W Fresh Market. The store is located at 50 Douglas Ave, Holland, MI 49424. We’ll be there between 10:00am and 12:00pm on the following dates:
Friday, November 18
Saturday, November 26
Wednesday, November 30
Monday, December 5
Thursday, December 15
Tuesday, December 20
Do you ever get fed up with the sound of the Salvation Army bell ringers? We’ll be playing real Christmas music – carols and traditional tunes from all over the world. It’s a little different from the usual sound you hear in stores at this time of year!
We hope you’ll drop by if you’re shopping for groceries at that time. Please help the Salvation Army provide food, shelter and social services to those in need throughout the year. Contact us here or on our Facebook page if you have any questions!
Would you like to book a handbell performance for the 2016 Christmas and holiday season?
Handbells can bring a magical and festive atmosphere to any Christmas or holiday event. We can give a seasonal performance of carols and holiday music, or provide background music to add that special, welcoming touch to your corporate event, community group celebration, winter wedding, or holiday gathering. Nothing says Christmas quite as well as the traditional sound of English handbells. Our duet performances can bring the sounds of the season to hotel lobbies, department stores, boutiques, community events and parties. As a handbell duo, we take us less room than a traditional handbell choir. We bring everything we need with us, and you won’t need to worry about how to fit a line of tables into your venue!
The 2016 Christmas and holiday season is approaching, and this year we’re in a new location! Christmas in Michigan is going to be very different from our previous Christmases in California and England. We’re expecting to do some driving through the snow this year!
If you’d like to find out more, please look at our list of Christmas and holiday music and our photos. Contact us to request our current fee schedule, ask questions, and book us for your Christmas event this year!
We’ve recently added some more 8-bell wedding ceremony music to our repertoire. These three are all well-known classical pieces.
The first is Mouret’s Rondeau ( Fanfare-Rondeau). Mouret composed this in 1729, as part of his first Suite de Symphonies. This piece is also well-known as the theme from Masterpiece Theatre.
Handel’s Water Music is a collection of orchestral movements from the late 18th century. Handel originally composed the music for orchestra. However, if you only have a few people and 8 handbells, you can play two of the movements: the Bourée and the Air.
Would you like to play these 8-bell arrangements?
If you’d like to play these pieces, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
When you purchase music from Choraegus, the scores come to you as PDF files. That means you’ll be responsible for printing your own music, and you won’t receive anything in the mail. Purchase of an 8-bell piece entitles you to print up to 4 copies for your handbell group. Please see our licensing agreement for full details.
If you’re buying Choraegus music for the first time, we recommend our step-by-step guide!
Would you like to book us to play handbells for your wedding ceremony?
If you’re getting married and you’d like us to play our 8-bell wedding ceremony music for your special day, please contact us and we’ll see if we can make it happen!
Any questions?
If you have any questions about buying or playing our music, or about booking us to play handbell duets at your event, please contact us!
This week we’re back home in Holland, Michigan, concentrating on getting back to “normal life” after our trip to Petoskey for the 2016 Bay View Week of Handbells.
“What is normal life?”, you may ask. For us, it means unpacking more boxes and finding places to put everything in our new home. It means cutting the grass that grew taller while we were away. Sadly, it also means filing away the music we rehearsed for the Week of Handbells concert. We need to get back into practising our duet music instead!
More about the Week of Handbells
This event takes place every year, in August, at the John M. Hall Auditorium in Bay View, Michigan. The event was first held in 1978. Donald E. Allured (1922-2011) was the founding director, and the event started with around 30 particpants. Since then, the Week of Handbells has grown! Over a hundred handbell musicians now take part every year.
The current director is Carl Wiltse, who has a long history with the event, going as far back as the very first Bay View Handbell Workshop. Don Allured passed the baton to Carl in 2002.
Maestro Carl Wiltse with his wife Pamela at the 2014 Week of Handbells
As with last year’s event, Fred Gramann assisted Carl in directing. He conducted four pieces in this years concert.
With Fred Gramann at the 2016 Week of Handbells
The Week of Handbells is always a demanding event, both physically and mentally, but the rewards are worth it. We started rehearsals at midday on Monday, and rehearsals continued at 9:00am on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. There was an extra 8:00am session each morning. These were for the super-enthusiastic or anyone who wanted to do additional work on those tricky sections in some of the music.
Some very challenging pieces!
The most-challenging pieces in this year’s repertoire were Michael Mazzatenta’s Allegretto – an entirely malleted piece, with fiendish chromatic passages and unexpected accidentals to catch us out at times, Alex Guebert’s All Creatures of our God and King, which Fred renamed All Meters… for obvious reasons, and Fred’s own Nollirac Carillon, with its many 7/8 passages and the occasional 4/4 or 9/8 thrown in. “Accent, accent… STRONG weak, STRONG weak, STRONG weak weak” quickly became a mantra for many of us during the week!
We were excited to hear Larry’s arrangement of Tico Tico performed in this year’s concert. Even though it’s a challenging piece, rehearsals went pretty smoothly from the very start of the week. A lot of preparation goes on before the event, of course. Participants are meant to come to the event “performance-ready”, having learned their music thoroughly in the weeks and months beforehand. Even though it takes a while to get more than a hundred musicians all playing together as one instrument, that advance preparation really makes all the difference!
The John M Hall Auditorium – a wonderful venue for the Week of Handbells
Our history with the Week of Handbells
We’ve been attending the Bay View Week of Handbells together since 2010. It was the first place where we spent time together “in real life” after meeting online on a website for handbell musicians. We celebrated our engagement there in 2011, and it was also the place we went to after flying from England when Carla’s visa finally came through and we were able to close the distance and start our life together as a couple in the same continent. The exciting difference about this year’s Week of Handbells was that, for the first time, we were able to drive to the event instead of having to fly all the way from California! It was a scenic journey, but it rained heavily for almost the entire trip there, and part of the way back too. Knowing that we now live in Michigan made such a difference to us at the end of this year’s event; the goodbyes at the “farewell breakfast” were less painful when we weren’t facing a long flight and a change of time zone afterwards!
Our favorite handbell event
The Bay View Week of Handbells is by far our favorite handbell event ever, for so many reasons. We get the opportunity to play some great music under the baton of a dedicated and talented director. There’s all the beautiful scenery too. The auditorium is surrounded by pretty cottages, and the lake is just a few moments’ walk away. The event is full of memories for us, and carries great meaning because of the part it played in our relationship journey.
Above all, the Bay View Week of Handbells is a wonderful event because of the people there. Every year we’re reunited with old friends and we meet new ones. We feel as though we’re all part of a big, supportive and happy family. Each individual is welcomed, appreciated and supported. We all encourage each other as we share in the experience of working together to prepare for the Thursday night concert. We’re encouraged to work hard – not only to become the best musicians we can be, but the best people we can be – and we’re already looking forward to doing it all over again in August 2017!
Today is the first day of the 2016 Bay View Week of Handbells! We’ll be spending the next four days playing some great music at the John M. Hall Auditorium in Bay View, Petoskey, as more than a hundred handbell musicians rehearse together under the direction of Carl Wiltse.
You can find out more about this event, and why it will always hold a special place in our hearts, by reading our article about the Bay View Week of Handbellsand taking a look at our gallery of photos. This year is the first time we’ve been able to drive to the event – from our new home in Holland, Michigan!
At the end of this week’s rehearsals, there will be a concert, open to the public and free to attend. The concert will be held on Thursday, August 18, 2016 at 8:00pm in the John M. Hall Auditorium, 1715 Encampment Ave., Petoskey, Michigan. An offering will be taken to benefit the Bay View Association Music Scholarship Fund.
This year’s concert repertoire:
Processional by Arnold Sherman
Allegretto arr. Michael Mazzatenta
All Creatures of our God and King arr. Alex Guebert
Concerto for Handbells and Organ in Baroque Style by Michael Helman
The Lord Bless you and Keep You by Peter Lutkin (sung; not played)
The performance will be professionally recorded by Pierpont Productions, so if you can’t make it to the concert, you can order a DVD or CD by calling Pierpont Productions on 231-347-4488.
We’ll be posting updates and photos on our Facebook page as the week goes by. We’d love to see you at the concert!
We celebrated our recent arrival in Holland, Michigan by spending a couple of hours playing our handbell duets on 8th Street. Thank you to everyone who stopped to listen to our music!
We had fun being street musicians in Holland today!
Downtown Holland is a great place to play music. We arrived armed with a street performers’ permit, and a map of approved locations. After that, it’s just a question of finding a spot along the street where you won’t be in anyone’s way. Then you have to park the car in a location not too far from your chosen performance spot. After that, you simply hope that people will enjoy the music you have to offer. We enjoyed playing our handbell duets in Holland today!
8th Street, where we played handbell duets
You can book us to play handbells at your event!
We had some enquiries about our availability to play our duets at other events. The answer is yes, you can book us to play handbells at your wedding, church service, party, Christmas event, wine-tasting… well, the list goes on. We’re new to West Michigan, so we have lots of dates available in the coming months!
Check out our YouTube channel to see some more of our duets. If you’d like to book us for your event, request a copy of our current fee schedule, or have any questions, please get in touch!
Just a few months ago, we made the life-changing decision to move out of the San Francisco Bay Area… and we found a house in Holland, Michigan! Rather than fly to Michigan (which we’ve been doing every August since 2010 for the Bay View Week of Handbells), we decided it would be more of an adventure to take a road trip from California, and see some interesting places along the way.
We left our apartment in California on July 1st. This meant saying goodbye to Mountain View, where Larry had lived since 1980. We also had to leave the home we’d shared since Carla moved from England in 2012.
Leaving our apartment in Mountain View
Our first destination was Yosemite National Park, where we spent the Fourth of July weekend. We hadn’t wanted to leave California without seeing that breathtaking scenery just one more time! From there we headed to Redding, to meet up with a friend for dinner before leaving the state.
Some unexpected surprises along the way
One of the unexpected things about our road trip was the joy we’d find in stopping the car to appreciate an area of beauty right by the side of the road. Even though we’d plotted our entire journey in detail before we started, and we’d booked accommodation in carefully-chosen cities along the way, there were still some wonderful surprises to be found. For example, the pretty, tumbling waters of Hat Creek, in the Lassen National Forest. We noticed this when we stopped to take a photo of a mountain, and ended up wandering along a grassy trail at the side of the road.
Hat Creek, Lassen National Forest
So many bugs!
Another unexpected delight (haha) we discovered along the way… was the number of huge insects that splattered against our car. As we made our way to Reno, Nevada, massive grasshoppers and other insects rained down onto the car. This is a close-up of the front of the car when we arrived in Reno:
Insects on the front of our car!
The beautiful Angel Lake
A far more pleasant surprise came as we drove through northern Nevada and decided to take a break for lunch. A sign at the side of the road said “Angel Lake”, which sounded like a great place to stop and eat some sandwiches. However, we didn’t notice the “12 miles” sign until it was too late to turn back. After a short while, the road became very narrow and winding! After a rather nervous drive, we arrived at our destination, at an elevation of 8,400 feet!
The pretty, but slightly scary, road to Angel Lake.The beautiful Angel Lake – well worth the drive!
The Great Salt Lake
Driving from Nevada to Utah was a fascinating experience, as the landscape changed so dramatically. We had never seen salt flats before! We drove to the Great Salt Lake, parked the car, and walked across the beach to the lake, without actually going into the water. There were three surprises there: one was the swarms of tiny flies, which wafted like dust storms around our feet as we walked. Another was the smell, which grew stronger as we approached the water and made us glad we hadn’t planned to make this a lunchtime picnic spot! Another was the dead and decomposing birds which were scattered across the ground as we walked. They appeared to have been drying out in the salty air and harsh sunlight. It was actually quite fascinating to see the remnants of wings as they dried up and became part of the salty landscape. We had to be a bit careful where we walked, though!
The Great Salt Lake
Our stay in Utah was all too short. However, another highlight was our visit to Temple Square. This is the international headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. The grounds and buildings here are impressive and beautifully maintained. We’re not members of the Mormon Church. Still, we thoroughly enjoyed our tour of several of the buildings and the opportunity to hear about the history of the church from knowledgeable and friendly tour guides.
Temple Square
Mount Rushmore
Another major highlight of our road trip was our visit to Mount Rushmore. Nearly three million people visit this national monument every year. They come to see the gigantic sculptures of the faces of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. These are all carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.
We went there shortly before sunset, and followed the Presidential Trail (be warned – there are a lot of stairs!) to get a great view of the sculpture and surrounding scenery. We stayed for the evening Lighting Ceremony. It was informative and very moving as military personnel and veterans were called to the front to participate in the flag-lowering ceremony and be honored for their service.
Mount Rushmore at sunset
Little House on the Prairie!
Another highlight of our road trip was our stay in Minnesota. We visited the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in the little town of Walnut Grove. This museum offered an informative look back at life in the area for pioneering families in the late 1800s. We thought it achieved a good balance between exhibits about the real-life story of the Ingalls family, the series of books, and the TV show. The museum is small, in keeping with the town it’s located in – and we were pleased that it hadn’t been made into a huge tourist attraction. We drove just a short way down the road from the museum, to a place where there were some reconstructions of prairie sod houses – and this was a very interesting and fun place to visit!
One of the prairie sod houses
After we left Minnesota, we headed to Wisconsin to meet up with family members there. It was the first opportunity we’d had to get together at their home since our wedding in 2012. We also went for a walk in the Owen Conservation Park in Madison, which turned out to be surprisingly peaceful and uncrowded. It was a lovely place to see flowers and nature, and even this tiny frog, which was about the size of a fingernail!
Such a tiny frog!
Finally at our new home in Holland, Michigan
We enjoyed our road trip so much! We were glad we’d chosen to drive east and see some of the sights along the way, instead of making the journey by plane. It was a trip with a purpose, but it felt like a much-needed vacation. We even managed to finalize the purchase of a house while we were en route to our destination.
Of course, the biggest highlight of our road trip was when we arrived in Michigan and drove to Holland. After eighteen days on the road, we were so glad to be home!
Our first day in our new home in Holland, Michigan!
We’re excited that Larry’s arrangement of Tico Tico no Fubáis on the repertoire list for this year’s Bay View Week of Handbells! The Week of Handbells is an event that’s very special to us.
Information about the sheet music
If you need to purchase a copy of Tico Tico no Fubá for the event, you’ll find it on Choraegus. Please note that the music will be sent to you as a PDF file for you to download and print for yourself. You won’t receive anything in the mail. If you’re unsure about what’s involved in buying music from us, you may find our buying guides helpful, and the step-by-step guide.
If you have any questions, or you’re unable to order online for any reason, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help.
Videos of Tico Tico
Here are two videos. The first is a demonstration video, produced before this arrangement had ever been played on handbells. The second video is from a rehearsal at the 2015 Distinctly Bronze event, which took place in Portland, Oregon.
This year’s Bay View Week of Handbells repertoire looks as exciting as ever. Here’s the full list of pieces, with composers/arrangers and publishers’ information.
PROCESSIONAL by Arnold Sherman (organ and bells) (Agape 2195)
ALLEGRETTO arr. Michael Mazzatenta (From the Top Music 20428)
ALL CREATURES OF OUR GOD AND KING arr. Alex Guebert (Choristers Guild CGB962)
OBLIVION by Douglas Anderson (From the Top Music 20426)
SONATA IN BAROQUE STYLE by Michael Helman (Beckenhorst HB497)
GIVE ME JESUS arr. John Behnke (AGEHR AG46025)
TOCCATA ON ‘KING’S WESTON arr. Matthew Compton (Agape 2767)
THE DRUNKEN SAILOR arr. Carl Wiltse (Stained Glass Music)
TICO TICO NO FUBÁ arr. Larry Sue (Choraegus)
AUTUMN LEAVES arr. Andrea Handley (Red River Music RRG5018)
NOLLIRAC CARILLON by Fred Gramann (Unpublished; available only from Heitz Handbells and Music)
GIVE US PEACE IN OUR TIME arr. Donald E. Allured (Composers Music Company HW0550)
CONCERTO FOR HANDBELLS AND ORGAN IN BAROQUE STYLE by Michael Helman (Beckenhorst HB424A)
THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU by Peter Lutkin (sung; not played)
We can’t wait to get started with rehearsing for this event. This year’s Week of Handbells will be another great one!
We’re nearly at the end of another interesting year, so it’s time for a look back at 2015. We always remember how slowly the time seemed to pass when we were separated by thousands of miles and waiting to see each other. Things are very different now we’re together in the same place, and the months seem to fly by! Here’s a look back at some of the moments that made us smile this year.
Supporting the Alzheimer’s Association
In 2015 we continued in our efforts to support the Alzheimer’s Association. A concert in Menlo Park at the beginning of the year also featured music from talented organist Angela Kraft Cross. We joined with Bay Area musicians T. Paul Rosas, Dylan Damonte and Brian Holmes for another concert in October. There, we had our first-ever opportunity to hear Alphorn music! We also participated in a Walk to End Alzheimer’s in San Francisco in September. That was a first for us, but something we’ll hope to do again!
We enjoyed a fun trip down to Riverside, California in March. Larry was invited to be the guest clinician at the Southeastern California Conference Advanced Handbell Festival. He spent the day helping high school students prepare for an evening concert. We also played our eight-bell arrangement of Great Is Thy Faithfulness. You can find a video of the SECC Advanced Festival rehearsal and concert excerpts on YouTube.
We also had the opportunity for a quick tour of Riverside, and a very nice lunch, before flying back to the San Francisco Bay Area.
A trip to the Siskiyou Summit Handbell Festival
At the beginning of May, we took a long road-trip to Ashland, Oregon, for the Siskiyou Summit Handbell Festival. Larry was the clinician for the event, and Carla taught a class on British-style four-in-hand ringing. We had a fun weekend, making some great music with other handbell musicians from Oregon and California, and performing in a well-attended public concert.
Our first visit to Philadelphia
The end of May brought us a really exciting opportunity to travel to Philadelphia for the first time ever. We performed in a shared concert with Philadelphia Bronze, an advanced auditioned handbell ensemble.
We had so much fun in Philadelphia! Our trip started with a guided tour of the city from one of the Philadelphia Bronze members, and a visit to the Liberty Bell.
It was exciting to visit Malmark Bellcraftsmen, the manufacturers of the handbells we use to play our duets. The factory tour was absolutely fascinating – and if you’re a fan of shiny bronze stuff, you should definitely put it on your “things to do/places to go” list!
Another member of Philadelphia Bronze took us to Valley Forge Park – the site of the third winter encampment of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. It’s a very scenic and peaceful place. We drove through and stopped at various historical buildings and monuments along the way.
Special thanks go to all at Philadelphia Bronze for making us so welcome – especially to Sarah, Martha and Rise for being great tour guides! You can read more about our trip in an earlier website post, and see a video from the concert on YouTube.
Carla received her 10-year Green Card
An important milestone happened for us in July this year. Carla received her 10-year Green Card, and became a permanent resident of the USA. It marks a welcome end to our immigration process, and means that we no longer have to be obsessive about keeping evidence of our relationship, to be able to prove to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services that our marriage is genuine. It is, of course, but still, it’s nice not to hear ourselves saying, “Oh! We’d better keep that for the immigration people” while we go about our daily lives.
Back to the Bay View Week of Handbells!
August is always a highlight of our year – because it’s when we go to Michigan to take part in the Bay View Week of Handbells. We’ve been to this annual event together since 2010. It’s the place where we first spent time together in real life! It’s also the place where we celebrated our engagement in 2011, and where we closed the distance in 2012. This event is always such a special week of music and friendship, and this year was no exception.
One disappointment for us this year was that we didn’t manage to make our planned trip back to England to visit family and friends there. Travelling overseas is always expensive, and our handbell trips seemed to use up all our budget and vacation time. But all is not lost, because we’re hoping to make the trip in 2016. Instead, a couple of our English friends and family visited us this year. We had the chance to do “tourist things” around San Francisco and take that long-awaited trip to Alcatraz Island in October!
(Don’t worry; they did let him out eventually!)
A busy holiday season
The 2015 holiday season was our busiest yet. It’s always a crazy time of year for handbell musicians. People think of Christmas, and they think of bells! We enjoyed sharing our holiday music with enthusiastic audiences at events across the Bay Area. Two beautiful candlelight services of remembrance – one for Kara in Palo Alto and one at the Chapel of the Chimes, Oakland – gave people from the local community an opportunity to honor and remember loved ones who have died.
We played duets at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts before the Pacific Ballet Academy Nutcracker performances. The German Holiday Market in Mountain View was another fun event! We also enjoyed the Sundar Shadi Holiday Display in El Cerrito.
One of the highlights of our holiday season was our shared concert with VoiceWorks in Redwood City. We played duets, and also arranged 8-bell accompaniments to the pieces being sung by the choir. We’re grateful to all who braved the rain to come and enjoy the music! We ended our holiday season by welcoming in Christmas Day at the candlelight services at Los Altos United Methodist Church.
Thank you so much to everyone who’s helped to make this year special for us. We’re grateful to family and friends, and anyone who came to one of our handbell performances or played our music. We hope 2015 was a good year for you too, and wish you all much love and happiness for 2016.
Today marks the first day of the 2015 Bay View Week of Handbells! The next four days will be full of music at the John M. Hall Auditorium, as more than a hundred handbell musicians rehearse together under the direction of Carl Wiltse.
You can find out more about this event, and why it will always hold a special place in our hearts, by reading our recent post about the Bay View Week of Handbellsand taking a look at our gallery of photos.
Come to the concert!
If you’re in the area, and you’d like to attend the free concert, there’s no need to book tickets in advance. The concert will be held on Thursday, August 20, 2015 at 8:00pm in the John M. Hall Auditorium, 1715 Encampment Ave., Petoskey, Michigan. An offering will be taken to benefit the Bay View Association Music Scholarship Fund. You should plan to arrive in plenty of time to get good seats, because it’s a popular concert!
Here’s a recording from last year’s Week of Handbells – it’s Larry’s original composition A Snail’s Pace.
As usual, Pierpont Productions will make a professional recording of the concert. If you’d like your own copy of the recording, you can order one from Pierpont Productions at 231-347-4488. Alternatively, fill out the order envelope available on the day of the concert.
We’d love to see you at the 2015 Bay View Week of Handbells!
