Sometimes it’s the simplest things that resonate the deepest, such as “Bell by Bell,” a free event presented annually on the Winter Solstice by the non-profit Make Music New York (MMNY) organization.
The simple concept was first suggested 15 years ago by Tom Peyton, an East Village musician and composer who brought the idea to Aaron Friedman, the founder of MMNY. Basically, anyone who wants to participate grabs a color-coded bell, and the conductors raise their colored flags when it’s time for those bells to be rung.
“At first, it takes everyone a little bit of time to get accustomed to it,” says James Burke, the executive director of MMNY. “But, you know, by the end of a half-hour music jam session, the first-timers are really genuinely making music together, and the compositions get kind of more complex as the program proceeds.”
Being a conductor takes some practice, though, as they’re not working from a typical score.
“It’s kind of interesting”, says Burke. “They’re written in a very simple way; we’re not looking at charts. We’re just looking at time cues. So, the flag-wavers know exactly when to raise their flags based on those cues. We synchronize when the song starts and give those cues to the public.”
The event draws people of all ages, and it’s hard to say whether the kids or the adults enjoy it more. Rather than perform any kind of obvious seasonal music, the compositions are all commissioned by MMNY.
“We tend to stay away from more traditional holiday music. Just because, you know, there’s a lot of Messiahs and Nutcrackers that are already taking place,” explains Burke. “So we try to be a little bit more participatory and innovative and out of the box. There’s always exceptions to that rule, though, depending on how our fan base and our network of musicians feel about a program that they might want to present.”
The tunes are all written in C major, with the bells each representing a note in the diatonic eight-note scale. Their repertoire includes works by the aforementioned Peyton as well as Nat Evans, Eric Frederic, Amy Garapic, Matt Marble, Eric Beach, Brian Chase (of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Glenn Kotche (drummer for Wilco), and Patrick Grant, whose group Tilted Axes joined up on Sunday for a memorable collaboration.
Grant’s group, which can vary in size from smaller ensembles of nine (as it was for this jaunt) up to 44 people, is, put simply, a marching band for electric guitars and percussion. Grant, who created the combo, describes it as “a performance project in which electric guitarists perform untethered through portable mini amps, joined by percussion, presenting original music via free concerts in alternative spaces, recorded releases, and choreographed spectacle for black box theater.”
His collaboration with the bell ringers was the result of a scheduling conflict that turned into a perfect opportunity.
Five years ago, the Tilted Axes were planning a performance route that started in the West Village in the Sasaki Garden and was to end at the Astor Place cube, but the Bell by Bell people were already scheduled to be there at that time. Grant found the perfect solution: he wrote a new piece that would incorporate the bells. Titled “Tiltinnabulation” — a nod to Edgar Allen Poe’s poem “The Bells” — it was a big hit.
Given the parameters of the situation, “anything I would write would have to be in C major,” he recounts. “I remembered a quote by Arnold Schoenberg that even though he had basically pioneered serial composition, he said that there’s still plenty of great pieces to be written in C major. So I kept that in mind.”
And, he continues, “I thought that whatever we do, it would have to at least be interesting and not corny. I agonized over what notes to pick. People say it’s the most Christmas-y piece of music they’ve heard without any direct references to Christmas or religion at all. As it turned out, it became sort of our seasonal hit! People like it and they always request it, but I always say we can only play it in December, though, because it doesn’t seem right any other time.”
Local artist and performer Elisa Blynn, one of the happy bell ringers, noted that “a simple rhythm can instantly unify people, because every human being alive on this earth has a heartbeat and they’re all beating together right now with the sweetness of the bells. I love public interactive art that makes people stop and drop into their child spirit within!”
Information about Make Music New York is online at makemusicny.org and on Instagram at @makemusicny. Their summer festival will be the 20th anniversary of the festival.
Tilted Axes are online at patrickgrant.com/tiltedaxes.html and on Instagram at @tiltedaxes.
