What do you do when it’s the Fourth of July, and you’ve finished eating party food and having fun with family and friends? The answer is… play handbell duets, of course!
An impromptu handbell duet performance
We were in Hayward, California for a family gathering, and we decided we needed to burn off some of the calories we’d consumed at lunch time. We were driving in the direction of home, and noticed the Chapel of the Chimes. Suddenly looked like a great location for a Concert With No Audience!
The Chapel of the Chimes is a 61-acre cemetery, crematorium and funeral home complex. It didn’t appear that we’d be disturbing anyone with our music, so we set up our table and bells. We played duets for around forty minutes! It was a great opportunity to play through some of the music for our visit to Los Altos Lutheran Church the following day. We also brought out some of the older pieces we hadn’t played for a very long time!
We had the usual interesting challenges that go with outdoor performances – a strong breeze, traffic noise, and even some festive firecrackers! The location and the sunshine also made it a very stripy-looking performance, as you can see from the video!
The following pieces are on the video:
America, the Beautiful
Come, Christians, Join to Sing
Drink to Me Only
Beautiful Dreamer
A Mighty Fortress
Moreton Bay
Great is Thy Faithfulness
Danny Boy
Botany Bay
Earth and All Stars
I Need Thee Every Hour
The King of Love My Shepherd Is
Allegro
We hope you enjoyed our handbell duets at the Chapel of the Chimes. All the pieces we played are available (or coming soon!) from Choraegus. If you’d like to book us for a performance with an audience, please let us know!
We’re counting down to the Bay View Week of Handbells!
So, what is the Bay View Week of Handbells, and why is it something special for us? Why are we counting down the days until we get there? We’ll try to explain some of the magic here.
The Bay View Week of Handbells takes place every year in Bay View, Michigan. Just over a hundred handbell musicians gather together for several days of intense rehearsals, after which we perform a public concert. Donald Allured founded the Week of Handbells in 1978, and Carl Wiltse is the current director of the event. It’s for people who enjoy the challenge of spending time learning the music, and performing to a professional standard. And yes, even though the music is challenging and the rehearsals are intense, we still manage to have fun!
The Week of Handbells is part of our story
For us, the Week of Handbells is particularly special because of the role it played in our long-distance relationship story. Our story started several years ago when we met and became friends online. By the end of 2009 we were spending several hours every day “talking” on Facebook Chat. Our friendship turned into a relationship, and we began to make plans to meet in person for the first time. Our first “real life” meeting took place in August 2010, when Carla travelled from London to Chicago O’Hare. From there, we flew together to Traverse City, where we rented a car and drove to Bay View.
Here is a photo of us before the concert at our very first Bay View Week of Handbells.
Our second Week of Handbells
After our first in-person meeting in 2010, we had to wait a whole year before we could see each other again. During our months apart, we decided for certain that we wanted to spend our future together. We travelled back to Michigan in August 2011 for our second Week of Handbells. That was a busy week for us! Before the start of the event, we made a special journey to Miner’s North in Traverse City to pick up some rings. Then we drove to the Old Mission Point Lighthouse, where Larry proposed, and Carla said yes!
We announced our engagement to our friends at the Week of Handbells, at the evening reception after the first day of rehearsals. Here’s one of our favourite photos of us – taken by Kim Finison at Bay View in 2011.
August 2011 was also the time when our set of Malmark handbells made it across the ocean in Carla’s luggage. Larry transferred them to his suitcase for the journey to California.
After our week in Michigan in 2011, we went back to our separate homes, and soon after that we started the US fiancée visa process to bring Carla from England to California. Carla’s K-1 visa was approved at the end of May 2012, and the race was on to get everything organised for the big move. We managed to time it to coincide with the Bay View Week of Handbells in August!
Closing the distance!
August arrived, and Larry flew to England to collect Carla and her son, and the three of us travelled together to Chicago O’Hare. There, our onward flight was cancelled and we were forced to spend an uncomfortable night camping in the airport. Strangely enough, the makeshift camp was at Gate K1. That’s the same number as the visa Carla had applied for! Bay View Week of Handbells 2012 was a very special one for us, because, for the first time, we didn’t have to say goodbye to each other at the end of the event. It was an amazing feeling to be able to pack up our things and travel home to California together, without having to do that horrible airport goodbye stuff that’s so painful for long-distance couples.
Since then, we’ve been to the Week of Handbells twice more. To say we’re looking forward to the next one would be an understatement. Well, we’re counting down the days on our website, right? So yes, we’re excited!
Even without all the memories that make the Week of Handbells so special to us personally, it’s still an incredibly wonderful handbell event. We always tell people that if we could only go to one handbell event in a year, this would be the one we’d choose. After all, where else can you play handbells in an Auditorium that’s named after a Hall?
And where else can you walk around during your lunch break and see houses like this one?
At the Bay View Week of Handbells, we have Tiara Tuesday!
We have the opportunity to play some exciting and challenging music, which each person works hard to prepare during the weeks and months before the event. That gives us four days to put together the finishing touches as a group, in time to give a superb concert on the Thursday evening.
Apart from the beautiful location, the exciting music and all the happy memories the Week of Handbells holds for us, we know that it’s the people there who make this event so special. Our annual trip to Bay View feels like a journey home; and the friends we’ve made there feel like family to us. For just a few days in August, more than a hundred people are brought together by the music of handbells. We wouldn’t miss it for the world.
The weekend is here, and it’s time for some more new handbell music! Here’s our 8-bell arrangement of A Mighty Fortress Is Our God; one of the best loved hymns of the Lutheran and Protestant traditions. Martin Luther wrote the melody and words around 1529.
If you’d like to play A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, the music is available for purchase and download from our music site.
This arrangement has no bell-sharing, no picking-up of accidentals during the piece, and no need for tables. It’s suitable for 2-4 ringers.
Information about buying Choraegus handbell music
Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. 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.
Please also note that our music is designed as downloadable PDFs. 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, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide, designed 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. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!
Exciting news! We’ve been invited to Pennsylvania at the end of this month, to perform in concert with Philadelphia Bronze!
This will be our first-ever trip to the Philadelphia area, which looks like an interesting place to visit! We’ll only be there for three days, but we’re already busy making plans for the trip. We’ll definitely include a visit to Malmark Bellcraftsmen, the manufacturers of the bells we use for playing our duets.
More information about the concert
The concert with Philadelphia Bronze will take place on Saturday, May 30th,2015 at 7:00pm. It will be at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, 132 E. Valley Forge Road, King of Prussia, PA 19406. We’ll perform some brand-new and unpublished duets in this concert. We’ll also share a new piece written by Larry for eight handbells and flute. We’re looking forward to hearing some exciting music from Philadelphia Bronze too!
On Sunday, May 31st, we’ll play some of our duets during the morning worship service at Newtown United Methodist Church. Then we’ll fly back to California later that day.
We’ll be posting more information about our trip on our Facebook page in the coming week. You can find Philadelphia Bronze on Facebook too!
We haven’t posted any new music for a while, so it must be time for us to introduce another eight-bell duet! This one is When Irish Eyes Are Smiling – a lighthearted song first published in 1912 as a tribute to Ireland and its people.
Would you like to play this arrangement?
If you’d like to play When Irish Eyes are Smiling, the music is available for purchase and download from our music site.
Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell group – so you only need to pay once. 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 such as concert programs.
Please note that our music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs, so 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, you might like to look at 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. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you need, and we’ll do what we can to help!
Taking a vacation without handbells is clearly a challenge! We spent a lovely long weekend visiting Yosemite National Park. The plan was to enjoy a few days in beautiful surroundings, without the pressure of rehearsals or concerts. That’s quite unusual for us, because we usually only stay away from home when we’re attending a handbell event.
But did we leave our handbells at home?
Well, no. We still took our handbells with us. After all, there was always the possibility we might decide to rehearse in the hotel! Or we might be driving past a wedding and be called upon to play duets. We might even get a sudden phone call asking us to play at a church service. Oh, who are we kidding? It just didn’t seem right to go away for a long weekend without taking the bells with us. Perhaps it is an addiction after all.
We left the bells in the hotel for three whole days without taking them out of the case. But on Sunday morning, we could ignore them no longer, and we decided to find somewhere to rehearse. Just moments away from our hotel in Oakhurst was the Little Church on the Hill– the perfect location!
Sadly, it turned out not to be such a perfect location, because we were competing with lots of traffic noise – but still, we spent an hour or so playing through some of the music we haven’t played for a while, and we had a great time. Here are some excerpts of the pieces we played:
The idea of a vacation without handbells was nice while it lasted, but turned out to be an impossible goal for us. We hope to be able to play at the Little Church again someday – maybe on our next trip to Yosemite!
Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s our third one together since we closed the distance in August 2012!
Of course, we like to think that all you need is love and music, but that’s not exactly true. Coffee, for example. And who can live without cheese? Also a passport and visa, if you’re in a long-distance relationship. And great communication skills, a reliable internet connection and phone signal, and seemingly-endless patience. These last few things aren’t always easy to find, but they help a lot. If you’ve been following us on our Facebook page, you’ll know about some of the things we had to go through in our long-distance relationship. Being away from each other was a huge challenge, but now that we’re together in the same place, we’re glad we didn’t give up. Now we can say “Happy Valentine’s Day” face-to-face instead of on a computer screen… and we know that all the waiting was worthwhile.
Wherever you are in your own relationship, we wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day. If you have your partner beside you, and everything you need, that’s wonderful. If you’re still waiting for all the good things to come to you, hang in there. True love is worth waiting for.
Today we’ll be taking a long road trip – from Mountain View to Redding – to take part in Redding Bronze. After spending nearly three years in a long-distance relationship, we think road trips together are fun – and we always look forward to this one. We’ll be driving for several hours, and will be stopping en route to search for Cherry Sours, our traditional road-trip snack. You’ll notice that they have no fat and no cholesterol – so they’re practically “health food”! Yeah, right. But we’re going to eat them anyway.
Redding Bronze is a fun and challenging handbell event! It takes place from Friday evening until Saturday evening, at First Presbyterian Church, 2315 Placer Street, Redding, CA 96001. Larry will be directing, and this year’s repertoire is as follows:
Moon Over the Ruined Castle – arr. Kazuko Okamoto
Beach Spring – arr. Lee Afdahl
Guantanamera – arr. Paul McKlveen and Ann Legarde
Knowing You – arr. Patricia Cota
Dorian Dance – Michael Joy
Festive Peal -Karen Thompson
I Will Arise and Go to Jesus – arr. Larry Sue
Diademata Festal – arr. Bill Ingram
There’s a public concert on Saturday at 4:00pm, and admission is free. If you’re anywhere near the Redding area, we’d love to see you there!
Here’s a new recording of Sing We Now of Christmas, previously published as Now the Green Blade Riseth. We’ve been having fun rehearsing and recording some of our Christmas music!
If you’d like to play this piece, the music is available for purchase and download from Choraegus.
Information about buying music from Choraegus
Purchasing this arrangement gives you permission to print and maintain up to four copies for your handbell ensemble – so you only need to pay once. 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 such as concert programs.
Please note that Choraegus music is designed to be downloaded as PDFs. 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, you might like to look at our step-by-step guide. We designed this to help you navigate the purchase and download process in a (we hope!) stress-free way.
Any questions for us?
If you have any questions about our music, please start by reading our Frequently-Asked Questions. Please contact us if you don’t find the answers you’re looking for, and we’ll do what we can to help!
The 14th Festival of Carols at Foothill Presbyterian Church, San Jose was a very enjoyable evening. A variety of musical ensembles from around the Bay Area took part, and performed for a large audience. We played two of our 8-bell duets there: the Ukrainian Bell Carol and a brand-new, unpublished version of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear. It’s always slightly daunting to perform an unpublished piece for the first time, but this one went well.
The following musicians provided the entertainment for the evening:
Larry and Carla Brass Bells Santa Teresa High School Guitar Ensemble Peralta Consort The Chancel Choir of Foothill Presbyterian Church Glory Ringers of Foothill Presbyterian Church, Ukelele Scramble Voices of the Valley
We enjoyed all of these performances, and so did the audience. A Festival of Carols event is always such a good way to welcome Christmas and enjoy the music of the holiday season.
Thank you to everyone involved!
Our thanks go to Jay Jordana for inviting us to take part in the Festival of Carols, and to everyone who worked so hard to make the evening such a success. If you’d like to see more of our photos from the event, we’ve posted them on our Facebook page.
