Did you know that since last spring, Doc and I have been in the handbell choir at our church? It all started out with us committing to join the choir for an Easter performance. That performance ended up not even being Easter Sunday and we've performed two other times since then! Going into it, Doc had never even played handbells. I played a year or two in the children's choir back in the day. Since we were both in the band (oh yea, that's right) we figured our limited music-reading knowledge would get us through it.
A couple of weeks ago our choir director asked if we'd participate in a handbell quartet...to perform two weeks after she asked. Sure thing! We figured with just four people and only two weeks out, it'd be easy breezy. Boy were we wrong!
Our pastor is currently preaching through the 10 Commandments and this past Sunday's commandment was #3: Thou shall not use the Lord's name in vain. Our choir director (and the preacher's wife) wrote a medley to fit with the sermon. The medley, Names of Jesus Medley, was made up of three (I think?) different songs. Blessed Be The Name, Something About That Name, and maybe something else. The whole medley uses 33 different handbells. Divide that by 4 and that's at least 8 bells per person. Yikes!
We found out that the quartet would be comprised of the two of us, our choir director, and another handbell member that's an ex-band director and can pretty much pick up any instrument and play it. Yea, two professionals and two amateurs.
Oh, and did I mention that the Sunday morning our director gave us the music is when she also told us that she was leaving that afternoon to go out of town and would return the afternoon before the day we were scheduled to perform?? Gulp.
The three of us met a couple times to learn the music and our parts, but everything changed when the director got back in town. She pointed out places we had wrong and told us she couldn't physically play all of the bells we'd left for her (probably because it was something like 16 bells!). So Saturday night we spent 3 hours in the church sanctuary working through the music. It was hardwork, but also pretty fun! (We are so wild and crazy these days.)
That was a long story. All that was just to let you know that here's a video of our performance. It's not the actual performance from during the service, but it's the run-through we did right before church started. My part is unfortunately much louder since I'm closer to the camera than everyone else, but hopefully you can hear all parts of the song.
Enjoy! And if you aren't impressed, don't tell me because I sweated through the whole service yesterday thanks to this.