What is it about bells that makes them so magical? According to Stevie Berryman, the sound goes back hundreds if not thousands of years.
"They're our earliest timepieces. They're our earliest form of mass communication. Bell towers signal the start and end of everything."
Berryman is a professor at Trinity University, where she leads the TU Handbell Ensemble. The group visited our studios to perform live on-air, bringing some of the smallest instruments down to a low G3 bell. (Not present: the G2, "about the size of a toddler," according to Berryman.)
As she told us in between the musical selections, performing in a handbell ensemble takes coordination. Each of the members not only learns about their instruments, they also learn how to juggle.
"Yean, we pull out scarves and I teach them how to juggle," Berryman said. "We have different games that we play that just work on left hand, right hand independence and that sort of thing… to make it less scary when you have to do two different things with your hands at the same time."
The coordination is not limited to individual performance, but takes the form of teamwork as well.
"If you're playing eight notes on a piano, one person can do that pretty easily," Berryman said. "But if you're playing eight notes at the same time and they are all played by a different person, that level of ensemble precision takes a lot of work."
Berryman continued, "If you play violin, and you're going to crescendo through a phrase and get louder, well you know how that plays. But if you're only responsible for one or two notes in a three of four-measure long crescendo, it's an exercise in teamwork."
The Trinity University Handbell Ensemble brings their precision performance to St. John's Lutheran Church at 502 E. Nueva St. in downtown San Antonio this Friday, Nov. 7 at noon for a free concert. Parking in the church lot for the concert is also free. Details are online at stjohnssa.org.
You can hear their studio performance as broadcast on KPAC 88.3 FM using the audio player at the top of this page.
PROGRAM:
- A Jubilant Peal, by Michael Helman
- Cadenzato, by Tim Waugh
- Acclamation in G Minor, by Karen Thompson
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