Imagine getting together with 11 musical friends, sitting around a single piano and playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik with each of you only responsible for a few of the keys.
That’s kind of how a handbell choir operates, according Inman Elementary music teacher and longtime school handbell conductor Janet Nordstrand.
“It really is quite an amazing feat of teamwork that they have to do together,” she said.
Nordstrand’s Inman-based Sound Wave bell ensemble is gearing up for its first concert of the year at Queens Avenue United Church in New West Sunday, and she hopes her 10 ringers gel at just the right time.
Christmas might be many people’s favourite season for handbell music, but it can be an unforgiving one for ringers, according to Nordstrand.
“You’re often playing well known melodies, so if something goes wrong, people know it,” she says.
She remembers the first time her husband heard one of her choirs perform – in a year when there were a lot of brand-new ringers.
Their rendition of Jingle Bells went something like this: “Jin-gle bells, jin-gle bells, jin [blank][blank] [blank] way.”
“The B player was on, but everybody else was off,” she says with a laugh.
While it may make for the occasional funny story, however, her choir’s music is no joke to Nordstrand.
Since taking over the group 15 years ago, she says there have been times when it has moved her to tears.
And when she got married, she used a recording of her bell choir as a processional.
“They are such a huge part of my life,” Nordstrand says.
She first took up the bells in her native Saskatoon when she was 12 years old.
What drew her are many of the same things that still draw Sound Wave’s ringers today: friendship, a love of music and the shiny bells.
“My friends and I just thought it was a really cool instrument,” Burnaby North Grade 11 student Pamela Liu says, “and having it make a sound and being able to be part of a choir was pretty cool to us at the time.”
Liu now plays clarinet in Burnaby South’s marching band, but ringing bells with Nordstrand at Inman in Grade 5 was her musical start.
Now a five-year veteran of Sound Wave, she likes the teamwork needed to play in a bell choir.
“It’s kind of like playing sports, where everyone has their own role to play to make the overall group successful,” she says.
The same thing attracted Burnaby Central Grade 8 student Kayla Yu.
She was in Grade 4 at Morley Elementary when a bell choir performed at her school.
As a piano player since about age four, her musical experiences had been pretty solitary until then.
“I really enjoy music and I thought it was really cool because I don’t really play with other people,” she says.
Her piano background was helpful, but the bells came with new challenges too.
“If you mess up in piano, you can just start wherever you want. In a group you have to keep going in the right places,” she says.
Like most ringers, Yu says she has had her share of performance flubs, but Nordstrand says Sound Wave’s current members – who represent five schools and range in age from Grade 7 to Grade 11 – are a talented and committed bunch.
Usually 12 strong, the group lost two ringers late this year, leaving the remaining 10 to pick up the slack – and extra bells.
A couple of players, like Yu, can be in charge of as many as 10 bells for some songs.
“It’s amazing what they are juggling and playing,” Nordstrand says. “I don’t think I could do it as a ringer.”
The Burnaby school district has three sets of bells – worth about $30,000 each – and two district bell choirs.
The second group, at Burnaby South Secondary, is conducted by the fortuitously named Rosemary Bell.
Sound Wave performs at the 17th annual Carols and Bells concert at Queens Avenue United Church (529 Queens Ave.) in New Westminster on Sunday, Dec. 7 at 7 p.m. Call 604-522-1606 for info and tickets.
