Thursday evenings, the basement of the Williamsburg Presbyterian Church fills with the sound of college students laughing and chatting over dinner. Students gather with packed dinners or meals from the Chick-fil-A next door. Just an hour later, the basement fills with an entirely different sound: the twinkling chime of handbells.
The Westminster Ringers is a bell choir of 13 students from the College of William and Mary. Along with weekly rehearsals, the Ringers perform at three of the church’s services each semester.
The group also gives a holiday performance at Colonial Williamsburg’s Grand Illumination fireworks show. Members described this as their main recital performance where they play their most challenging songs.
“That’s kind of a social thing as well, because our friends can come and we can teach them how to play,” Sarah Bigley ’27 said.
The Ringers’ catalog includes standard hymns and traditional Christmas carols, as well as handbell arrangements of non-religious songs with beautiful melodies, Elise Howe ’28 said.
Director Norman Elton ’03 selects new pieces of music for the Ringers to play each year. Elton, who also plays organ at the Presbyterian Church and works as the College’s IT Director of Infrastructure, said he picks pieces that increase in difficulty throughout the year as new members learn the bells.
Though most Ringers come in with musical experience, Elton noted that the handbells require an unusual approach to reading music. While orchestral musicians each read music for their own instrument, bell choirs read from a single score and individually play the notes assigned to their bells.
“It’s like 13 people playing one big instrument,” Elton said.
Elton grew up playing bells at a Presbyterian church in Hampton, Virginia, before joining the Westminster Ringers as a student at the College. He also studied organ with University Organist and music instructor Tom Marshall, who was the organist and bell choir director at Williamsburg Presbyterian at the time. When Marshall went on sabbatical, Elton took over the Ringers. He later assumed the organist role as well.
Elton noted that, while the Westminster Ringers is a church choir and directed by a church employee, student members don’t necessarily have ties to the Presbyterian church.
“The church has a college ministry as well, separate from this. We’re just strictly music,” he said.
Ringers consistently agreed that religious affiliation is not a barrier to entry. Bigley, for one, said she is not Presbyterian.
“It’s cool that a lot of people in the group aren’t, and it’s fun to just be able to have the music that connects us,” Bigley said. “And it’s so cool to be able to do it in the church environment. I think the acoustics in there are really awesome, and it’s cool that we have a sub-community in the bigger church community.”
Elton noted that, in his time at the College, members typically joined the bell choir with prior handbell experience. However, he said since the pandemic, more beginners have gotten involved through their ties to music groups on campus.
“I don’t recruit people anymore. They go find themselves, and the majority of them had not done this before,” Elton said. “It’s just music people, and they’re like, ‘This seems kind of odd. Let’s try it out.’”
Both Bigley and Ryan Booker ’28 heard about the Ringers from friends in the College’s Wind Ensemble. Booker, a music minor also involved in Wind Ensemble, Wham Bam Jazz Band and Sinfonicron Light Opera Company, knew little about the handbells but joined out of his love for music.
“They [my friends] were like, ‘I’ve got bells rehearsal.’ And I was just like, ‘I don’t know what that means,’” he said.
Booker now enjoys how Ringers rehearsal can feel like its own little world removed from the stress of student life.
“It’s very fun to come in regardless of whatever is going on in your week, and you just get to be there for an hour and a half, and you just get to chill and think about bells,” Booker said.
Bigley, who plays flute and piccolo in Wind Ensemble and Pep Band, was also a bells beginner when she joined. She said she finds playing the bells uniquely collaborative and immersive.
“You’re responsible for your two notes, and you genuinely rely on everybody else to make the
complete sound. It’s really cool to be able to be part of something bigger, and it’s nice to feel
like your notes, and you, are very important and needed in it, because without you, the song can’t play,” she said.
One Ringer, Howe, grew up playing bells in her hometown Presbyterian church. She said she is one of the few members with a Presbyterian or a handbell background.
“By the time I came to college, I had had six years of experience and knew that I wanted to
keep doing bells. I will say, that’s a little unconventional,” Howe said.
Grace Lail ’29 also played in a church bell choir before college, but she noted that the Ringers incorporate more advanced musical techniques than her previous choir.
“We have all these different symbols that mean different ways that you ring the bell. Like, you hit it on the table sometimes, sometimes use mallets, and sometimes the mallets are on the table, sometimes mallets are hanging in the air. So, I had to learn what all that stuff meant because it’s a lot more involved than you would think,” Lail said.
Elton added that this musical complexity is just part of what differentiates the Westminster Ringers from most people’s expectations about bell choirs.
“A lot of church bell choirs are not college-aged people doing exciting rhythmic music. This is a slightly different level than what you might picture at home or what you might see in a movie,” he said.
Alongside the musical experience, members enjoy the social bond the small group brings. Many members highlighted weekly pre-rehearsal dinners at the church as their favorite aspect of the choir. Elton said that students devised this tradition all on their own after the pandemic.
Part of the group’s tight-knit nature stems from Ringers recruiting their friends from other musical groups. After nearly half the choir’s members graduated in the spring, Elton was excited to see new members fill the available spots early this semester. Elton and current members emphasized that the bell choir is a beginner-friendly, supportive environment to try out a new and unusual way of making music.
“If you come in knowing how to read music, we can teach you the rest. They’re equally enthusiastic about getting new people on board,” Elton said.
