There’s nothing quite like the sound of the English-handbell choir during the Christmas season at the First Presbyterian Church in East Hampton, when gloved hands ring gleaming bells and chimes at exactly the right moment to create songs that evoke angels.
These are the hands of the community: everyday people who come together to make music — and magic and the holiday spirit.
They practice every Sunday for months and months leading up to the big holiday concert, planned this year on Sunday, Dec. 20. (They are also helping hands, as the concert is a fund-raiser. It is free to attend, but guests are encouraged to take a cash donation for the East Hampton Food Pantry, a nonperishable food item or two, or a new, adult-size hoodie or sweatshirt for Maureen’s Haven to share with the homeless.) Among them are a teacher and a dentist and a TV-camera operator and a gardener and a retired cop.
Some of them, like Joan Osborne, 92, bring a professional’s touch. Now retired, she was a pianist and organist who spent 45 years accompanying the congregations at various South Fork churches.
Mrs. Osborne has been playing in the handbell choir ever since Jane Filer took over as director in approximately 1970, ringing in new life for a fledgling bell choir after an inspirational trip to England. Mrs. Osborne lives across the street from the church and walks over with her husband, the retired attorney Robert Osborne, every Sunday morning.
“It’s a lot of fun. The bells are beautiful, and the people who play them are good friends, so we enjoy doing it,” she says. “The congregation seems to enjoy it, as well. A lot of the pieces we play are variations on hymns that the congregation knows. I think everybody would enjoy the bells — people can come and hear them, whether religious or not.”
Mrs. Osborne plays in the middle octave, while Dr. Pember Edwards, a dentist who practices in Wainscott and who was baptized at the First Presbyterian Church as an infant 37 years ago, plays an octave higher. Edwards has been ringing in the bell choir since 1999 when she was in the sixth grade at East Hampton Middle School and one of Jane Filer’s successors, Andrea Cooper, recruited her.
“It’s good for me because it’s something totally different than what I do throughout the week,” the cheerful dentist says. “I love working with my hands. It keeps me coming back. I’ve played in choirs, solos, duets, trios, quartets. I’ve directed. I love it.”
Edwards plays four-in-hand, a more advanced style of bellringing. “The clappers are facing in separate directions,” she explains. “Depending on how I hold them, I have one bell that rings off to the left and one that rings forward. In my right hand I have one that rings forward and one that rings to the right. I play them separately or together — I don’t necessarily have them ringing straight on — but anyone who knows bells, knows it’s a positioning difference.”
And then there’s Matt Chapman, 40, another East Hampton High School graduate, whose big ol’ bear paws can handle the much larger bells at the lower end of the bell choir’s range. During the weekdays, he can be found working the yard at Riverhead Building Supply on Lumber Lane, and on weeknights he runs government meetings for East Hampton’s public access TV station, LTV.
On Sundays, when church is in session, Chapman — who happens to be Pember Edwards’s fiancé — can often be found behind the camera live-streaming the services for congregants at home. Chapman’s first go-round as a ringer was for a Father’s Day performance in the late ’90s or early 2000s, but he has become a consistent presence in the bell choir over the last four years or so. He also happens to play the viola.
“I just like the music. I can read the music, but on the other side of it, it clears my brain and recycles it from five days of work, whether it’s my first job or second job,” he says. “It clears my mind and gets me to focus on something else. It has a relaxing effect, and the music is really good. It keeps me active and my mind stimulated.”
Bellringing can be a little challenging physically. “It does take a little toll on your wrists,” Chapman says, “because you have to flick the bell to produce the sound.”
Cooper, a member of the church since 1967, directed its handbell choir for more than 20 years. Her grandson Nick, who recently went off to college, played with the group for a few of them. She recalled sitting on a flatbed truck some years ago — she thinks it was an East Hampton Town anniversary parade or maybe the 1976 Bicentennial — ringing their bells down Main Street. Though she’s not the director anymore, she is still a member. “I just ring now. That’s where the fun is,” Cooper says.
The current bell-choir director is Jane Hastay, a professional musician and prolific music teacher who learned bells in a workshop at the Westminster Choir College. She has recently donned the gloves herself to ring along with Osborne, Edwards, Chapman, and their fellow musicians because the group is short by at least one performer. Anyone out there free for an hour or so on Sunday mornings, Hastay wonders? Even those with a long-ago background in a high school performing arts ensemble can find a place in the Presbyterian Church, she says.
“For someone who has experience reading music, it’s not that difficult,” Hastay says. “It’s also something that can improve one’s skills if you’re not the best sight reader. You get better. There’s room for all levels, I think, because those who want more challenge can have it.” The music “looks like a piano score, with treble and bass clef, but it’s way more notes than 10 fingers can play,” she explains. Anyone with interest can contact her via the church.
“Nothing sounds more like Christmas than handbells. Maybe a children’s choir, but it’s just perfect for Christmas,” Hastay says.