Handbell Tourism Sparks Debate

Unlike many people, I have never had to explain to anyone where I am from. Everyone knows about Las Vegas, Nevada. I bet you could go to any country in the world, and they would still know about Las Vegas. I did, however, always get the question “people live in Las Vegas?” When you live in a place that is known only as a tourist destination, people tend to forget that there are over a  million people who live in the surrounding area. Tourism was great to me growing up. I got spoiled seeing fantastic performances and working with incredible musicians (who also happened to teach in the schools). I have never had to pay an income tax thanks to the millions of people who stay in hotels or put money in slot machines. All this to say that I am slightly biased in favor of more tourism. Which is why I wasn’t shocked when I received an email asking me to pay to play handbells in Carnegie Hall.

From it’s beginnings as a single ensemble in 2006, the Stafford Regional Handbell Society has grown to 10 ensembles ranging in all ages and skills. Along the way, they’ve come up with some products, including a Christmas themed book of carols called “The Great Christmas Ring”. “So this seems kind of cool,” commented the Society’s Programming Director Neesa Hart in a post on Facebook looking back at the moment when Distinguished Concerts International New York (DCINY) asked if they could perform “The Great Christmas Ring” in Carnegie Hall. According to Neesa’s Facebook post on November 14, 2018, DCINY proposed a mass ring of the Stafford’s Regional Handbell Society’s Christmas music during the intermission of the Messiah next December. Then, based on the response, look at doing more handbell-centered performances in later years. “And they were going to use my simple little product as a mechanism,” Neesa wrote. “Which, I have to tell you, was no small thrill.”

Distinguished Concerts International New York is an entertainment production company which stages performances in many well known venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Their business model revolves around musicians paying for the opportunity to perform in world class venues. According to an interview with Iris Derke, co-founder of DCINY, in Crain’s New York Business from 2012, “In lieu of a grant coming from a major bank or the National Endowment for the Arts, we look to our performers to be mini-sponsors…In return, they get to walk away with an experience, like a fantasy baseball team.” This business model has been extremely successful. Within two years of beginning, the company was profitable, and it continues to grow and remain profitable in a time when funding for the arts is unsteady. 

If you were like me and grew up with the saying that practice, practice, practice is the only way to get to Carnegie Hall, the news that you could just pay your way on stage came as a shock. However, it turns out that Carnegie Hall itself has always been run on a rental model. “Carnegie officials are quick to note that the rental situation is hardly new” states a Wall Street Journal Article from 2017. “In fact, Carnegie Hall…started life as a rental facility and remained exclusively so until around the 1960s. Many of the famous names associated with the hall, including the Beatles, who played Carnegie in 1964 at the time of their U.S. arrival, paid for the privilege to do so.” The article also notes that “just about 170 of the nearly 700 annual events at Carnegie’s three stages are presented by the hall itself”.  Tourism, it turns out, pays the bills even for the most prestigious stages in the world.

When the news of the Carnegie Hall handbell performance spread over social media, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative. Many people complained that this performance continues to perpetuate the stereotypes about handbells. And I know we in the handbell community struggle with the legitimacy of our instrument. After explaining what handbells are thousands of times, I totally understand that feeling. Many of us continue to struggle with finding the answer to how we get our instrument taken seriously by other musicians at seasons other than Christmas. But there is no silver bullet, no one single answer to this problem.

While this is the first time this level of formal tourism has come to the handbell world, this is far from the first time handbell people have paid to go on unique performance adventures. For years now we have had events like the handbell cruise hosted by Bells of the Cascade and Camanae Mundi tours to Europe organized by William Kyle. Right when this blog started my brother and I paid a bunch of money to play bells with the Raleigh Ringers on their Virtuoso Experience. At the time I didn’t think of that trip at tourism, but in reality that trip was just as much about getting to see the Raleigh Ringer Headquarters as it was working with Dr. Payn. And I loved every minute of it!

Cover Photo: “Carnegie Hall” by Pedro Lopez on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.