The Jubilate Ringers handbell choir — 14 ringers playing more than 100 bells, plus handchimes and more — will perform as part of Music on the Hill’s “Sounds of the Season” Christmas concert, to be held at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Wilton on Friday, Dec. 11, at 7:30 p.m.
Music on the Hill handbell players will ring Christmas carols and songs in the Westport Barnes & Noble store, 1076 Post Road East, on Sunday, Dec. 6, from 1 to 3 p.m. All are welcome.
The Sounds of the Season concert will feature the ringers along with the Music on the Hill Festival Chorus performing Christmas carols old and new, as well as favorite carols sung by all.
The Jubilate Ringers will premiere Noël, a suite of French carols arranged for handbells by Artistic Director Ellen Dickinson, the concert’s conductor. They will also ring the dramatic and hauntingly beautiful Change Ring Prelude on Divinium Mysterium, an arrangement of the medieval plainchant melody found in hymnals as Of the Father’s Love Begotten.
The Festival Chorus will sing several early German carols; arrangements of carols by American composers William Billings and Charles Ives; and a group of carols about Christmas bells, including a setting of the Tennyson poem Ring Out Wild Bells by contemporary American composer Linda Dowdell.
Concert tickets are $20 in advance at www.musiconthehillCT.org; $25 at the door. Children and students are admitted free. St. Matthew’s Church is located at 48 New Canaan Road.