A resounding noise: Wesley Bell Ringers celebrate 45th anniversary

Zach Fox cringes at the memory of his most embarrassing flub as a member of the Wesley Bell Ringers, Utah’s most famous handbell choir.

At his first Christmas concert, he was assigned the opening note. He played the wrong one.

“It was a really low note so it was hard to tell,” Fox jokes now, five years later.

It didn’t take long for Fox, who already played electric bass guitar and violin, to consistently hit the right notes. Now he plays six bells and rarely misses.

“You really don’t need to know music to play them,” he says. “It’s a lot more a feeling kind of thing. It’s pretty fun because you get these ‘muscle memories.’ Sometimes you get going pretty fast and you can’t look at your hands, they just do what they’ve been trained to do.”

Bell choirs began in Europe as practice for playing the giant bells on church towers, which could only be struck at certain times of the day. P.T. Barnum brought the choirs to America in the 19th century as an act in his popular circus. By the 1960s, more American churches created handbell choirs as a way to engage young people in a fun bonding experience.

Today, there are more than 10,000 such choirs across the country, most associated with schools or with professional community groups. Utah has dozens of such groups and, in 2005, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir established its own bell choir to accompany the famed singers.

But the Wesley Bell Ringers, which began in 1963, are the oldest choir in Utah.

It was the brainchild of Edwin J. Duncan, a member of Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, who wanted something to engage the church’s bored teens. Duncan retired in August 1993, at which time his assistant, Terry Waite, took over. Waite played in the choir as a young man from 1967 to 1970 and has directed handbell and vocal choirs for 28 years at Salt Lake area churches.

In the past 45 years, the choir has expanded to 10 octaves of English handbells and two octaves each of hand chimes, cup bells and silver melody bells, plus a carillon. It has involved more than 400 young people between 14 and 18 and spawned a training group for junior-high students known as the Asbury Bell Ringers.

“All it takes is a sense of rhythm, an ability to count and a little hand-to-eye coordination,” says Waite, who plays no other instruments and sells fences for a living.

Though potential ringers don’t have to have musical training, they do have to agree to a rigorous schedule of practice — 2 1/2 hours every Sunday and 1 1/2 on Tuesdays. And they must raise all the funds for the choir’s annual tour. Twice a year, the kids put together a giant rummage sale. They also host two pancake breakfasts and cater a Valentine’s Day Dinner for the church’s adult population.

In the past 43 summers, the choir has toured all 50 states, as well as 10 Canadian provinces. It has been invited as Honor Choir to nine area handbell festivals and performed at the National Music Educators Convention, Cathedral of the Pines National Memorial, the United States Capitol, Mt. Rushmore, Disneyland and Walt Disney World. It has performed numerous times with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony. In February 2002, it was featured as part of the Salt Lake Winter Olympics.

The total experience “fosters hard work, teamwork and commitment,” Waite says. “But our mission is to glorify God with our music.”

Rachel Kohan, in her fourth year with the choir, likes the family feel.

“We are all really close even though we come from all different schools, classes and backgrounds,” Kohan, a senior at Rowland Hall St. Mark’s in Salt Lake City, says. “You get a lot of support from your peers.”

The technique was harder than it looked.

During a performance of “Somebody Loves Me,” Kohan was “four-handing,” or using two bells in each hand.

“When I finally got it right, it was kind of a revelation moment,” she says.

Even four years later, she still makes the occasional mistake. At a recent concert, she played an “awful” note.

“It’s best to play them loud and then you can recognize your mistake rather than hiding behind it,” she says. “That’s the only way to learn.”

Such lessons are not lost on Fox, now a chemistry major at the University of Utah. He calls himself an agnostic but can still see a “spiritual” benefit in playing with the choir.

“You definitely learn about loving other people,” he says. “It’s really educational and the diversity is really great.”

Hilary Berner has a stronger sense of the choir’s godly mission.

“Every week at least one person tells me how God touched them during the music,” says Bernar, a member at Christ United Methodist. “And when I play bells, I feel God’s spirit with me.”

Peggy Fletcher Stack writes about religion and spirituality. Reach her at pstack@sltrib.com.