Bell Choir

It will come as no surprise that the performing arts are one sector of our cultural life that have been especially impacted by the current pandemic. For so many vocalists and instrumentalists, it is just not yet safe to produce music that requires breath (which thus emits droplets and aerosols that may contain virus particles). For musicians for which breath is not required to make a sound (such as keyboard, string, and percussion instruments), the challenge is finding a space where an audience is willing to gather. For all of us musicians, we are either ‘on pause’ or finding new and creative ways to make music through the wonders of technology. 

For us at The Presbyterian Church of Danville, our adult vocal choir is taking the pandemic as an opportunity for education, conversation, and fellowship. The bell choir, however, has worked together with the Covid-19 Taskforce to find ways to safely rehearse and prepare music for our worship services. It has been a much-needed creative outlet for many of our bell choir members!

Some of the precautions we’ve put into place you would expect: wearing masks at all times, keeping a social distance of 6-feet or more, limiting our time together to 60 minutes or less, etc. We also have broken the bell choir into two smaller groups of six ringers each, mostly as a means of limiting our contacts should anything alarming occur among our group. One group meets on Monday evenings, the other on Wednesday afternoons; both in the Fellowship Hall (another change) since it has a larger, more cavernous space than the 2^nd floor music room. With all of this in place, we feel we are being as safe and responsible as possible, and we are enjoying the opportunity to rekindle old friendships and music-making responsibilities.

Obviously, with the bell choir reduced from 14 to 6 members, the sound and range of octaves will be very different. Music written for bell sextets feature just a portion of the entire set of handbells. The music you’ll hear in the service today will feature roughly the top half of the bells we own. (Perhaps you’ll miss hearing some of the low, rich sounds from the bass bells.) The group in the video this morning is the Wednesday afternoon group; the Monday folks will be coming up on All Saints’ Sunday in just a few short weeks. Enjoy!