Battle Hymn of the Republic is one of the best-known American patriotic hymns of the nineteenth century. We have a new arrangement of this classic for eight handbells. Mine eyes have seen the glory of …
Face it, there’s a lot of music here. So it was time to get a truly functional catalog together. On the menubar above, there’s a new item, Catalog. If you roll over or click on …
The Ends of All the Earth Shall Hear celebrates the eventual completeness of God’s purpose for His world. This hymn speaks of the inevitability of how He one day will be worshiped and honored by …
The God of Abraham Praise (LEONI) is the melody Hebrew hymn (“Yigdal”) from before the 18th century. In Jewish worship, it’s frequently sung as the first morning service hymn or as the final evening service …
Telling others of God’s gift of His Son is part of the Christian life. Kate Hankey wrote the lyrics and G.F Fischer composed the music to form the beautifully-written hymn I Love to Tell the …
Jeff Wayne, Gary Osborne and Paul Vigrass wrote Forever Autumn about the loneliness that follows lost love. Its lyrics compare the departure of a beloved one to the falling leaves and chill of autumn. The …
God is so great and so incredible that His love is overwhelming. Love Divine, All Loves Excelling reminds us that His care for us is beyond anything we could expect or hope for, and His …
The folks at the Turing Opera Workshop are developing a new plugin that generates audio from a vocal line in a score. By this, I mean it actually creates a track that sounds like people …
Thanks to the EKCO Ringers, we now have video of two of our duets, Danse Macabre and Eagle Wings! Danse Macabre, by Camille St. Säens, depicts a spooky, nightmarish scene. It’s a Halloween favorite. Eagle …
Many of you remember singing Jesus Loves the Little Children from a while back. Maybe that was in Sunday School, or children’s church, or even a baptismal service. Jesus loves the little children, All the …
We just returned from a terrific weekend in Philadelphia (“just” meaning: “we-had-weather-based-flight-delays-and-had-to-rush-from-gate-to-gate-for-our-connecting-flight-and-had-a-shuttle-driver-who-was-trying-to-find-his-last-passenger-for-our-ride-home-and-didn’t-get-back-until-2:30-a.m.” … but who’s counting?).
Anyway, the concert we shared with Philadelphia Bronze went beautifully, and we had lots of fun making – and making music with – friends who we’ve mostly known only via social media till now. We’re very thankful for their idea to create such a program, and to make it so much fun!
What if you put on a handbell concert, and no one came to see it? We’ve played in some programs of this sort that had small audiences. It can be bit discouraging, because most of us would prefer to be performing to a full house at Carnegie Hall (and earning 50% of the gate receipts, of course). Unfortunately, we as a musical community seem not to have built up the public image of handbells to the point where “build it and they will come” is the norm – yet!.
So… we have a fix for that! It’s our new “Concerts with No Audience”™ approach to life. We’d rather play than not, and on sunny days it’s at least as much fun to practice outside as in, or just to go somewhere else rather than stay in the same old rehearsal space at home. And the best thing is that we get to keep 100% – ALL – of what people pay for the tickets! 😀
We’ve sponsored a couple of these “Concerts with No Audience”™, and they’ve been a roaring success (especially when Harleys and well-loaded semihaulers pass by). There have been occasional cheers (from the kids playing ball in the street – when they score, of course). And we get the usual looks of puzzlement – What are they doing? How do they do that? – from people who see us. But the scenery is wonderful, because we get to choose where we go, and with eight-bell music, we can pop into practically any place and perform for people who aren’t there.
By the way, if you’d like to book us for a concert with audience, you can contact us at larryandcarla.com!
Concert with No Audience™ in Oakhurst, California
Concert with No Audience™ in Walnut Grove, California
We were privileged to have our arrangement of Zequinha Abreu’s Tico Tico no fubá selected for Distinctly Bronze West 2015, where nearly 120 ringers participated in its world premiere performance under the baton of Dr William Payn. Because DB is a high-level event, our friend Alex Guebert created some wonderful percussion parts for the occasion, and now they also are available for purchase!
Here’s a rehearsal video!
Purchasing the handbell choir version of this arrangement grants permission to print and maintain up to fifteen copies for your handbell ensemble; purchasing the single copy version grants permission to print and maintain one copy. Purchase also gives permission for performance, broadcasting, live-streaming and video-sharing online. See our licensing agreement for full details, and 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.
We have eight new titles that we’ve added today, and they’re all for twelve bells (C5,D5,E5,F5,G5,A5,B5,C6,D6,E6,F6,G6)! They’ve been arranged in the spirit of our eight-bell music: A fresh look at the genre with some fun twists for ringers to enjoy. Do take a look at them!
We’ve just released a couple of new small ensemble arrangements. They’re larger-scale than our eight-bell arrangements, requiring twice as many notes. You can play them as four-in-hand quartets, or with eight ringers with two bells apiece, or anything in between.
We think they’ll be great fun for whoever plays them, so please take a look!
We’ve just released our newest “Surprisingly Easy”™ collection of eight-bell pieces. This time it’s a set of hymn arrangements that you’ll find suitable when you need to prepare something for church but have only a few people to ring. Or you might have been thinking about getting into playing eight-handbell duets – these are a great way to start!
It’s nearly the end of January… and it feels as if the year is trying to run away without us!
We finally are getting around to releasing a brand new piece! We debuted it in our Alzheimer’s benefit concert on January 23rd. We call it “Grizzly’s Peak”, but you might know it by another title. 😀
No… this isn’t a reference to how Thanksgiving used to be. Rather, it’s about music!
Until recently, all we had for our piece A Snail’s Pace was a simple Finale playback MP3. The notes were there, but the piano patch just didn’t show how it would sound with real-life handbells.
But… at the Bay View Week of Handbells in August, A Snail’s Pace was one of the pieces selected for the repertoire, so courtesy of Pierpont Productions we have a video of over a hundred handbell musicians playing it!
Just surf to our product page for this piece, and you’ll find the video there!
We’re heading into Christmas season (well, after “Thanksgiving season” if you live in the USA), and so we’re continuing to refresh and expand our holiday repertoire.
We’ve been getting some hopeful messages asking about when we’ll be creating another one of our “Surprisingly Easy” collections. One friend even said that she’s found them to be very useful for teaching her ringers “four in hand” ringing, while others have said they’re having fun.
