Rochester handbell ringers share musical 'electricity' with the community
Jan. 5—ROCHESTER — With memories of his childhood ringing in his ear, Alex Shepard found his parents' eyes while playing the familiar notes of "The Mission" theme song. The movie song played throughout their home, and now it rang into the air as handbell music.
As a musician since elementary school, Shepard stepped into playing the handbells about three years ago. He enjoys the range of rhythms in the handbells' bright and dissonant sounds, each ringing out notes of hope, peace, joy and fun.
"It's like a living piece of art, just like when any musical group is performing whether it's the symphony or band or at your university or even like high school," Shepard said of playing handbells with the Rochester Area Handbells group. "We're all artists in a sense and ... we're all painting the same picture but we all are painting different parts of the canvas and then it finally all comes together."
Rochester Area Handbells Director Paul Kingsbury describes the experience as a "little bit of electricity" shared between the ringers and the audience. He said the experience is exciting for ringers who have worked for months to create harmony. They perform around December and May.
The 16 ringers, or 32 hands, each have their note to play, similar to the keys on a piano. The notes "stretch from the big, low bells up to the tinkling high ones, it's a very cool auditory experience," ringer Jen Welch said. She is drawn to the "big, really resonant, rich sounds" of the bass handbells, though the ringers move between the handbells often.
"They all have their own just unique feel and sound to them, and so it's just very fun to be able to incorporate those different sounds with the piece and really make it its own thing," Welch said. She started playing in a handbell choir about 30 years ago with her church.
Through the RAH group and three church handbell choirs, Kingsbury sees the musical experience as "a very team-oriented endeavor." Each person striking the right note at the correct time shows how "every single person in the ensemble is important," Shepard said. From 7-ounce to 14-pound handbells, the group challenges their musical backgrounds with mixed meters and techniques like hitting the bells on the table or rubbing them with a wooden dowel.
"One of the kind of interesting things about bells is that the basics of playing are the same across the entire set, from the very biggest bells to the very smallest bell. There's some specialized techniques they can have on either end but for the most part everyone can do the whole set," Kingsbury said.
With increasing sets of handbells, the group shares music from spiritual to pop. There's one piece Kingsbury keeps turning to in the Christmas season, "Wonderdance" by Robert Scott Riker, with its variety of "voices" telling a story and a grand visual ending. Their Christmas Around the World concert on Sunday, Jan. 7 is a chance to share music from a variety of cultures and ethnicities, including English, Irish, French, Peruvian and Russian.
The handbell concerts, often hosted in church venue locations, offer a learning environment for the community. Kingsbury enjoys people's notes of amazement at the art form, "it tells me that we're doing the right thing."
"I wanted to do something outside of the church. I wanted to do (music) that would not be applicable in a church or just not available. So the Christmas stuff is obviously much more applicable to playing within church, but we did a couple seasons ago we did movie music ... and that's fantastic music but you're not going to play that in a church so we had a lot of fun with that," Kingsbury said.
When: 3 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 7.
Where: St. John's Lutheran Church, 111 Second Ave. NE, Stewartville.
How much: Free, though a freewill offering is accepted.
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