Welcome!

From San Francisco and the Silicon Valley to Jakarta and Las Vegas, Bay Bells has brought the music of English handbells to an ever-widening audience. Performing on over 100 bells and chimes and representing over 200 years of musical experience, Bay Bells is one of the nation’s longest-running community handbell ensembles. Never miss an update, follow us on Facebook!

The Bay Bells Mission:

• To educate the community in the art of handbell ringing through outreach to the widest possible audiences with performances and workshops.
• To provide an opportunity for advanced ringers to challenge their technical and musical skills.
• To explore and help create a wide variety of handbell music.
• To provide a resource for other local handbell ensembles

Commissions

Bay Bells has been fortunate to work with many talented musicians who have written and arranged a variety of pieces for our group to perform. Following is a partial list of the music Bay Bells has been proud to debut:

"The Big Country"
Jerome Moross
arr. Larry Sue

"Blizzard"
William Bryan Kyle

"Cosmic Dance"
Sondra Tucker

"From the New World"
Antonín Dvořák
arr. Cheryl Baker

"I Got Rhythm"
George Gershwin
arr. Cheryl Baker

"Picarella"
William Bryan Kyle

"Sway (Quien Sera)"
Pablo Beltran Ruiz
arr. Sandra Eithun

"Thunder and Blazes"
Julius Fučík
arr. William Bryan Kyle

"When I'm Sixty-Four"
Paul McCartney
arr. Larry Sue

Affiliations

Bay Bells is a Handbell Ventures performing ensemble. The group is a member of Area XII of the Handbell Musicians of America.

Bay Bells is honored to have performed with a wide selection of talented musicians: 

• Pacific Masterworks Chorus
• The Peninsula Girls Chorus
• Cupertino Symphonic Band
  
• Resounding Achord
  

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Our Equipment

For those interested in all the equipment it takes Bay Bells to perform any given concert, our choir currently owns a few hundred individual handbells and a similar number of individual handchimes. A more exhaustive list of all our equipment follows.

Handbells
Bay Bells performs on five octaves of Malmark handbells.

Handchimes
Bay Bells performs on four octaves of Malmark handchimes.

Everything Else
In addition to our instruments, Bay Bells uses a combination of 4' and 6' long tables, triangular wedges and 2' extenders for additional table configurations, 4" foam pads, black corduroy table covers, music stands for the lowest bass bells and custom made wood block stands for the rest of the table, and a whole travel bag of mallets in assorted shapes and sizes.