Date: 4/7/10
Contact: Marc Lebovitz
When Paul Rosene retired as a professor of music at Illinois State University in 1990, his creation - the ISU Handbell and Choirchime Ensemble - retired too. Rosene had established the group in conjunction with his music therapy curriculum, a program he directed at Illinois State.
His successors did not have the expertise to continue the handbell/choirchime group and, as the years passed, the group's "hardware" - bells, sheet music, tables and protective table pads - were sold, became unusable or disappeared.
But almost 20 years after they were last heard on campus, the sound of handbells have returned to Illinois State this year in the form of the Redbird Ringers. And Paul Rosene, long retired in Florida, facilitated their return.
Twelve members of the Redbird Ringers will present a concert of sacred and secular music performed with handbells at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 18, in Kemp Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public. Music graduate student Carlos Avila will conduct.
In the two decades since his retirement from Illinois State, Rosene did not retire from handbells and choirchimes. He has written three method books about handchimes and is considered an authority in the teaching of chimes. He and his music educator wife, Doris, retired to Florida but continued to travel extensively throughout the South to help handbell and choirchime directors in both church and school settings. It was at a music conference in Georgia that he met Lauren Willis, then a high school senior.
"We were encouraged to sit at different tables to meet new people, and Dr. Rosene and I ended up at the same table," the ISU sophomore said. "When I told him I was interested in music therapy, he told me there was a wonderful program at Illinois State. Before that, I'd never heard of Illinois State."
Not only was ISU's music therapy program attractive to Willis, but she was an experienced handbell performer, playing since seventh grade in her home church in Powder Springs, Ga. Her mother, director of the church group, is a life-long handbell performer. She spent her 2008-2009 freshman year getting acclimated to the music therapy curriculum, campus and Central Illinois.
This year, Avila was accepted into the School of Music's graduate program in percussion and conducting. A graduate of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, Avila was a founder and director of Coro Polifonico Juvenil de Campanas (Youth Polyphonic Handbell Choir), and a young leader in the area of handbells. When he and Willis put their heads together, the result was the creation of Redbird Ringers.
"We have been using the handbells that are still here," Willis said. "We rehearse with a four-octave set in Cook Hall 212. There has been a fantastic response from music faculty and staff, loaning us resources. No one has said 'no.' And when we put the information on Facebook, we immediately got 10 people interested."
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