If you have heard a handbell choir perform during this or any other holiday season, chances are Kevin McChesney was involved.
With more than 600 titles in print, from Christmas carols to the theme from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” the Colorado arranger and composer is by all accounts the most prolific source of handbell music on the planet.
His biggest seller: “Sing We Now of Christmas,” which opened the program at a concert by the Rocky Mountain Ringers in Denver earlier this month.
“One of the things that first turned me on about handbells is that it’s a very inclusive instrument,” says the 43-year-old musician. “There’s sort of a feeling in ensembles that if you can keep up, you can stay in.
“I found out right away that there’s really a place for everyone, from people who have never played music before all the way up to the professional level. I thought, ‘Boy, this is great. I could write music for beginners and concert halls, and everything in between.”‘
That was 20 years ago, when McChesney signed on as music director at Faith Presbyterian Church in Colorado Springs – the church he grew up in – not long after graduating first in his class from the University of Colorado music school.
At the time, he thought he might want to write music for movies or choral groups. But he soon realized those fields were already overcrowded. After trying his hand with a set of bells owned by the church, he swung in a new direction.
Since then, he has become one of the biggest names in the international handbell community, winning numerous awards for composition, teaching clinics here and abroad, and evaluating new works for one of his field’s leading publishers.
“The market is still very church- based,” he says. “But the pendulum is swinging a little. There are a lot more community groups than there were even five years ago.”
McChesney believes he is the only person anywhere who makes his living solely by writing music for handbells, whose history is rooted in England’s church towers: Tuned handbells were developed to allow bellringers to practice note sequences without annoying townsfolk. McChesney estimates handbells are played by 25,000 ensembles nationwide.
The bells, ranging from the size of a teacup to larger than lampshades, are typically shaken, tapped or otherwise sounded by groups of eight to 13 ringers. Performers are assigned to handle four or more bells, each sounding one note in the scale.
Besides scoring music for this collective “instrument,” McChesney directs an ensemble of his own – the Pikes Peak Ringers, an auditioned group he founded in 1991. It has made three concert appearances this month and is rehearsing for the premiere of an extended work by McChesney in January.
The “Suite for Classical Guitar, Handbell Ensemble and Chamber Orchestra” will be performed in concerts at 7 p.m. Jan. 12 at Broadmoor Community Church and 3 p.m. Jan. 14 at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, both in Colorado Springs. Admission will be free, but donations of $10 per adult and $3 per child are suggested.
The piece, which runs about 20 minutes, is less ambitious than McChesney’s earlier “Ring of Fire” concerto, in which the handbells served as “the virtuoso soloist” in dialogue with the orchestra.
But the guitar suite was written with a different aim in mind. “I wanted to explore whether you can take handbells away from center stage and put it on an equal footing with the oboe, the clarinet and the other instruments in this conversation,” he says.
An accomplished guitarist in his own right, McChesney considered doing the suite’s solo work himself.
“But I thought, this first time around we’re going to need my ears out there,” he says, so the guitar parts will be performed by Colorado College music instructor Dale Miller.
McChesney does his composing in the basement of his home in a neighborhood in northeast Colorado Springs. He lives with his wife, Tracy (a member of his handbell ensemble), and their two cats, Belle and Grace Note.
Oddly, there’s not a handbell to be seen in the entire studio. He works mostly with two far more sophisticated pieces of equipment: an 88-key electronic piano and a personal computer equipped with Sibelius software, which can automatically transcribe sounds into written script on a screen (or, with a click of the “P” key, can play the music back).
This month, McChesney has been working to translate the band version of the theme to “Superman” into a handbell score, which the Pikes Peak Ringers may take on a week-long tour to upstate New York in July.
“The fascinating thing about handbells is that, as in opera, the visual element is a big part of what we do,” he observes. “You have to know how to move with the music, how to stand, how to pick up bells properly and how to put them down. It’s very physical.”
How physical? Consider that a bass bell may weigh as much as 18 pounds.
“That may not sound like much to a parent who’s used to holding a child that size,” McChesney says. “But if you hold it out at arm’s length, it’s another story.”
Staff writer Jack Cox can be reached at 303-954-1785 or jcox@denverpost.com.
