This “travel writeup” is going to be a bit different from the usual in that I stayed in Calgary the whole time, but I was in a hotel away from home, so it counts. It’s also different in that quite of few of you reading this were there with me, in part or in full. So with that in mind, I should tell you that everything that follows is a personal account from my perspective and my perspective only. It should not be seen as a representation of the event itself, any of the team who worked with me on it, nor any of the wonderful people who gave up their summer break to share this time with me. Got it? OK!

Classic Bronze is a 4-day event for advanced handbell ringers, mostly. I say ‘mostly’ because it now encourages participation from ringers of all skill levels, but it began as a means for advanced ringers to gather and play some seriously challenging music. Most handbell groups play at the intermediate level (Level 3) and so advanced ringers rarely get the opportunity to play the crazy stuff. This event gives them that opportunity.

But before any of that can happen, a team of people works for two or more years, planning, budgeting, working logistics, finding a venue, hiring clinicians, choosing music, and logging literally thousands of hours of work… all of it volunteered.

It’s not a new event. It has been held in the Edmonton area for the last two decades, but the founders retired and passed the event to us in Calgary.

I’ve helped plan handbell events before, but this one is by far the biggest and it’s the first time that I’ve been chair of the organization. It was intimidating, to say the least. But all of that is boring. Let’s get to the event.

The pre-show

When the team and I brainstormed about who we would hire to lead the advanced group, one name came up immediately: Kevin McChesney. Now, the non-ringers reading this might say, “who?” but anyone in the handbell world looking at this page instantly recognizes that name. I became a Kevin fan way back in 1994 when I first began directing a handbell group in Houston called HeavenSound.

Our group went from absolute beginners to a pretty decent advanced group and in every step of that journey, Kevin McChesney’s music was right there in our music binders. His writing shows that he understands the instrument and writes specifically for that instrument, which was not always the case, especially back in those days, when handbells were mostly used to accompany hyms or provide background music. Then, in 1997, Kevin unleashed a little piece called “Capriccio” and the world of handbell music changed forever.

Nobody had ever written a piece like this for handbells. It pushed every boundary there was, and not by a little. Mixed meter, multiple techniques, blistering speed, and crafted to stand alone as a showpiece, not just as an accompaniment to something else. And it was hard. It is unashamedly Level 5 music in a world that was comfortable at Level 2. The minute I heard it, I knew that our group would play it… someday. And we did, although it took us many years of honing our skills before we could even attempt it.

In 2002, my group went to FebFest, a huge handbell festival in Houston, and Kevin was the clinician that year. That’s when my Kevin fandom really took hold. Not only is he a great composer and arranger, but he’s also a fantastic conductor.

When Kevin agreed to be our clinician for Classic Bronze 2025, we were thrilled. His name attached to our event leant it gravitas, credibility, and it suddenly became a must-do event. Even more thrilling for me, as the chair of Classic Bronze, I did most of the correspondence between him and our event and over the course of several months, we developed a rapport that went well beyond working out event logistics. He and I are alike in a thousand different ways, from our love of handbells to our ability to sing the Speed Racer theme from memory. Don’t ask. So when I picked him up at the Calgary airport two days before the event, it was like meeting an old friend.

During our correspondence, I became comfortable enough to share with him some of my handbell pieces. I felt like a child with a crayon drawing, handing it to Rembrandt and saying “look what I did!” I don’t have any kind of music composition training, I have no idea how to come up with a chord progression, and music theory is just one of those things that escapes me. That’s why I do arrangements of existing stuff and not original compositions. In short, I feel like I’m just floundering around, writing by trial and error, rather than crafting a piece properly. To have Kevin even offer to look at a few of them was an honour - to have him tell me that they’re good was mind-blowing. His positive response to my “Magic Carousel” arrangement led to it being included in the Classic Bronze repertoire. Then I showed him another piece I was doing, a transcription of “The Hut on Fowl’s Legs” from “Pictures at an Exhibition”. It’s insanely difficult and I wasn’t even sure that I should spend time finishing it, since no group that I’m involved in could play it…

It doesn’t look that bad until you find out that the tempo is quarter=180. Yeah. Anyway, I emailed it to Kevin and asked if there was any good reason to keep going - and he shocked me by saying that it was well-done and perhaps he and I should collaborate on filling out the rest of the movements. He’d done five of the ten and now I’d done this one, so why not? Jaw, meet floor. So after I collected him from the airport and took him to the venue to check in, we went out to dinner to discuss things. It was the first of many surreal moments to come in the next week.

In addition to Kevin, we had also hired two other world-class conductors to lead our Copper (intermediate) and Accent (beginner) groups. Lisa Kyriakides from Ontario led the Coppers and Tammy-Jo Mortensen led Accent. We also had a special guest conductor, Samantha Beschta from Connecticut, to lead one of the massed-ring pieces. The level of talent we brought together for this event will be hard to top in the future.

From left: Samantha Beschta, Kevin McChesney, me, Lisa Kyriakides, Tammy-Jo Mortensen

The worst part of doing an event like this is moving all the equipment. Those bells are heavy and there are hundreds and hundreds of them. We rented a cargo van to make it easier, but it still took two trips to get all the equipment to the venue.

Once the equipment is on-site, then it has to be put into the correct rehearsal space, on the right tables, and in the right order. This insures that all the bells get back to their proper homes when the event is over. It’s a huge job, though.

The Main Event

Tuesday morning came bright and early with a few surprises. The deputy mayor of Calgary presented the land acknowledgment and a representative from the Calgary Tourism board white-hatted the clinicians, a Calgary tradition for VIP visitors.

The biggest surprise may have been that instead of officially opening the event with a tolling of a bell, as is customary, I opened it with a piece I wrote for the occasion. Because it was a surprise, however, nobody managed to get the first part in a video, so what you see below is missing the first verse. You can still see the reaction from the participants, though. It was crazy fun and really set the mood for the week that followed.

From this point forward, I can only relate what was happening in the Bronze (advanced) group, because that’s the one I was playing in. The other groups rehearsed at the same time we did, so my experience was limited to Bronze. As part of the plan, every group got to work with all four conductors at some point in the week, with Lisa conducting a Bronze piece, Kevin conducting a Copper piece (and working with Accent for a session), and Tammy-Jo and Samantha each taking one of the massed ring pieces. It was really beneficial to the ringers to work under all of the conductors with their different styles and approaches to the music. All of them were outstanding.

For the advanced group, I can honestly say that Kevin was well above and beyond what I’d expected, and my expectations were very high. I sometimes had a difficult time concentrating on my own playing because I was mentally taking notes on his directing, hoping to use those skills myself. At one point during the rehearsal for “Rondo Appassionata”, a fiendishly difficult piece, I was literally moved to tears by his conducting. His entire body radiates the music to the group and what he wants from us doesn’t need to be explained, because we can see it. It was the first time I really connected with that particular piece.

Conversely, when a piece is more like a party, such as Matthew Compton’s “Soundscapes”, his directing style matches that mood, too. The delicate, almost ballet-like movements he used to direct the Rondo were tossed out in favour of (questionable) dancing and vocal cues. A fun piece made even more fun by the way it was conducted. And yes, those bells are really getting dunked in water!

It’s a good thing that rehearsals were fun, because that’s what the entirety of Tuesday was. From 9am to 5pm, we worked like hell on the music, pulling every ounce of musicality we could muster from the pieces. Attendees were required to study their music before they arrived, so they wouldn’t have to learn their notes or figure out the tricky parts when they got here. Instead, we worked on the intangible, the musicality, the emotions that exist just beyond the surface of the page. That’s how you connect with your audience and that’s the goal, after all.

Wednesday also began early with even more rehearsal time, but we wrapped it up around 1pm so everyone could give their brains a rest. About fifty of the attendees paid extra to take a bus we chartered to Banff for the afternoon and evening. Many of them had never been and of course everyone was amazed at the beauty of the town and its surroundings.

Thursday was another full day of rehearsals, but the day ended with team trivia in one of the lounges at the venue. It was a packed house and everyone had a great time. The winning team, “Broken Handles” got 26 out of 30 questions right, earning them a gift bag full of Canadian goodies.

Most of Friday consisted of more rehearsals. Now I know that seems like a lot, but consider this: our local group meets for two hours every week for several months in order to put on a concert with around five songs in it. We all know each other, too, so we’re already familiar with each others’ playing - that’s crucial for handbell groups, since you have to work as a team to play the instrument.

In Classic Bronze, you’re thrown into a room with a bunch of people you’ve never met, playing high-level music and you have just 3 days of rehearsing to pull together ten pieces for a concert on Friday evening, playing under the leadership of four different conductors

That’s insane. It’s a tribute to the preparedness of the ringers and the skills of the clinicians that this is even possible.

This next bit is a bit personal… most of you know that I flew to the UK to meet two old geezers who launched a career as rap stars in their 70s, while one of them was also busy beating cancer. Their inspiration pulled me out of a deep depression and I am forever grateful to them. Sometimes, you just need role models in your life.

At the last of the Bronze rehearsals, Kevin McChesney - whom I have idolized for decades - told the group that he felt a strong connection to me and that we were very much alike. He counted me as his friend and said that I was his inspiration. I barely held it together for the rest of that rehearsal and as soon as it was over, I raced up to my room and had a little meltdown. I don’t live my life in order to be someone’s inspiration, I just live my life as best as I can. If someone is inspired by that, then I’m deeply honoured. If someone I admire greatly is inspired by that, then I’m overwhelmed. It took me quite a while to recover from the flood of emotions I felt that day. I asked Kevin a bit later, “so I’m your Pete and Bas, then?” He laughed.

After lunch, rehearsals moved from the regular rehearsal rooms to the concert venue. Playing in a different space can make the experience very different, since the sound is different in a large room and the conductor is a lot farther away. Also, it’s the first time we get to play with all the parts, such as the addition of flügelhorn and drum on Chuck Mangione’s “Land of Make Believe”, an already-difficult number that was made even more difficult by having a horn solo playing something completely different than what we were playing. It was fun, though!

I gotta say, being in a Bronze-level rehearsal is completely different than being in a regular rehearsal, even the ones for our local group. Everything is compact and there’s no need to explain very much, so you get a lot more accomplished in a shorter amount of time.

Example: if I’m in a rehearsal in our local group, which is very good, our director Annie might want a passage to be more lyrical with better phrasing. She’d tell us that we need to make the music swell a bit here, relax a bit there, pull this note or that note a little, etc etc etc. Then we’d try it several more times, with further instructions from her until it sounded like she wanted.

In a Bronze rehearsal, Kevin would say something like, “that was good, but let’s make it more lyrical” and that’s exactly what we’d do. No need to explain how to do that… everyone in the room knew exactly what he wanted and how to change what we were doing to make it happen. He wouldn’t even need to count us in again, just “make it more lyrical” and drop the downbeat and we’re on board already. From my perspective as a player, it felt like magic.

That evening, it was time for the big show… and a group photo.

The concert was well attended. We hoped to get 200 people and I think we did. The view from the bass bells was certainly impressive!

Two of the pieces in the concert lineup were my own arrangements. Lisa Kyriakides conducted “Somebody That I Used to Know” - and I’ll admit, her interpretation of that piece made me actually like it for the first time. And Kevin McChesney brought his magic to “Magic Carousel”. To have such talented conductors interpret my arrangements in a concert setting is a dream come true. I even had Kevin autograph the sheet music of the one he conducted.

Several of the ringers wanted me to autograph their copies… that’s certainly a first for me!

The day after the concert, it was back to business, renting the van again and schlepping bells around town, back to their usual homes.

All modesty aside, the event was a huge success. My team and I worked for more than two years to pull this off and I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished. It was a combined effort, not just from the local organizing team, but also from the clinicians and the ringers. It was exhausting, but it was a blast.

…and I can’t wait to do it again in 2027.