Bells will ring out in joy Easter Sunday at the Pittsburg Presbyterian Church.
“We’re getting ready to start on our Easter music,” said Terry Cox, current director of the bell choir.
She said that she started ringing around 1977 at a church she attended while living in Chanute.
“They got a set of bells, and I started playing them,” Cox said. “Then I moved to Pittsburg.”
She first played bells at the United Presbyterian Church, which was located on the corner of Fourth and Walnut. That congregation later merged with the First Presbyterian Church at 502 N. Pine, creating the Pittsburg Presbyterian Church. The bell choir also made the move with Cox.
“A lot of people have come and gone,” she said. “I haven’t always been the choir director. Sometimes I just play. I also do solos sometimes.”
There are currently seven members in the bell choir. They are Gail Burch, Norma Hiatt and Patty Nicholas, who are sisters, Jennifer Murphy, a Pittsburg State University music major, Cyndi Moore and Cooper Neil.
“The more people you have in a choir, the more complicated pieces you can play,” Cox said. “Ten people would be nice.”
A musical background is not utterly necessary to play in a bell choir, but is helpful, she said.
“You at least have to have a sense of rhythm,” Cox said. “You’re only playing two or three notes, but that’s not the hard part. The hard part is playing them at the right time. It takes us two or three weeks to work up a new piece.”
“The trick is to turn the page fast enough,” said Burch. “I’m always playing as I have to turn.”
Cox said that hand bells are made in seven octaves.
“We have three octaves of bells in our choir,” she said.
“I think another octave would be nice,” Neil said.
The group practices weekly, and plays during services about once a month. Members will play “Easter Alleluia” on Easter Sunday. Cox noted that there’s an extensive repertoire available for bell choirs.
“There’s quite a prolific bunch of composers who write especially for hand bells,” she said.
Choir members place their sheet music on stands created especially for bell choirs by the late Millard Laing. A former PSU music department chairman, he was the father of Burch, Hiatt and Nicholas.
The sisters have warm memories of their father and the music stands.
“I think he made them in the early 1980s,” Hiatt said after Wednesday’s choir rehearsal. “He tried to set up an assembly line to make them, and dreamed of selling them to churches all over the country. He took them to hand bell conventions, and really had a ball.”
PITTSBURG —
