Not having all the bells specified on the BUC (“Bells Used Chart”) doesn’t mean you can’t play a piece. You usually only need a bit of imagination to overcome these situations: One or more of your ringers in a four-in-hand ensemble isn’t comfortable with pairs of bells below G5 or C6. One or more of …
Category: Larry and Carla
Aug 17
It only seemed quiet this week!
I apologize for the apparent lack of activity at Choraegus this past week! The real-life picture involved more than just sitting around; we participated in the Bay View Week of Handbells. BVWOH happens in the first half of August each year in Petoskey, Michigan. The “Bay View” part comes from the Bay View Association, a …
Jul 17
A new “standard” version of “How Firm a Foundation” for eight handbells!
Some of our titles take more than one form. Our new, more accessible “standard” eight-bell version of “How Firm a Foundation” (labeled “version 2”), for instance, provides a second option for playing a more-challenging-than-easy score if you don’t have enough time to learn the original one with additional fiddly bits. We have a video for …
Mack the Knife (Handbells, 5-8 octaves, plus handchimes, 3 octaves, Level 5)
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill wrote Mack the Knife in 1928 for the Threepenny Opera. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Bobby Darin performed it, guaranteeing its place in our music social awareness. It’s such a happy, bouncy song that you’d hardly know it was talking about a the bad, bad guy in the story. But …
Dec 19
Merry Christmas 2023!
As usual, our December has been our busy performance season. People associate handbells with Christmas, so that’s when they book us. We’ve been at some fun places: Holland Kerstmarkt. Between Thanksgiving and mid-December, we were the ambience for our city’s Dutch Christmas market. It’s an outdoor event, so we pre-chill our bells, bundle up, and …
Dec 28
Merry Fourth Day of Christmas!
We’ve had a wonderful time arranging Christmas carols. That’s not just the ones that we usually sing, but also going on the hunt for ones that are unfamiliar (to us). One day on Facebook, we saw that someone was asking about the Italian carol From Starry Skies Descending, we looked into it, and soon had …
Dec 26
Merry Second Day of Christmas!
You’ve probably seen social media reminders that the twelve days of Christmas start on December 25th and continue through January 6th. Today, the second day of Christmas, is known as Boxing Day, from an era when the practice was for the more affluent to give gifts to those less fortunate, such as their house staff. …
Dec 25
Merry First Day of Christmas!
Today is Christmas Day, and so we’re starting the twelve-day celebration with Gaudete, an English piece from the Renaissance (or earlier). Joyous Christmas to you!
Dec 24
Merry Christmas!
As I write this from our home in Michigan, the storms pummeling most of the country have brought us lots of white, fluffy snow. It’s been accumulating all over our neighborhood, and has been constantly falling because of the “lake effect”. We love it here in winter! We hope you’ve had a good year, wherever …
Sep 22
It’s Our Anniversary!
Today is our tenth anniversary! Not Choraegus (we celebrated 26 years at the end of last year), but OURS, as in Larry & Carla. From God making it possible for us to meet on the Handbell Community Online, to Facebook, to Skype, and through the Bay View Week of Handbells, where we met and got …
