These ladies are no southern belles. You won't see them prancing around in frilly long dresses. Some have never even been further south than the Twin Cities. Collectively, their ages total 1,000 years.
The Summit Belles do, however, make beautiful music together.
Under the tutelage of Diane Lagasse, this group of a dozen Summit Apartments residents – all women – have been ringing bells to form songs since September. And although it's been only four months, their instructor says the Belles' bell-playing skills rank right up there with the pros.
“As a group these ladies are very successful,” Lagasse says. “They took off right from the start and from week to week their improvement has been phenomenal. You’d never know it's only one hour a week they practice.”
“The group has really developed since the beginning,” Kathy Hanson, who coordinates activities at the Summit, adds. “They're excited for their practice every Monday afternoon and if, for some reason, it's canceled, they're disappointed.”
Music therapy
Lagasse, who is currently the music and liturgy coordinator at St. Francis Church in Fisher and has an extensive background in music, says she and her son, Aaron, became acquainted with hand/desk bells through Emily Wangen, a board-certified music therapist.
“Emily had Aaron play the bells when she did her initial assessment. Aaron successfully played songs on the bells, using both hands, having no previous exposure to bells,” she explains.
This prompted her to order a set of the color-coded bells for Aaron to use at home. The bells are designed for dual use: “Push the handle top and it's a desk bell. Pick it up and swing it, it's a handbell,” she says.
Putting her musical knowledge to good use, she then came up with a unique method to also color code the music so it would be easy to read for bell playing. The music sheets consist of the song lyrics and colored boxes above the words that correspond with the color of the bell to be played. The boxes also have the name of the letter note – C, D, E, F, G, A, B or C – of the bell.
“Music therapy is one of my greatest passions in life,” Lagasse says. “I have absolutely loved going to music therapy sessions with Aaron. He is learning adaptive guitar now and is doing marvelously well.”
The Summit Belles thing started last year when Aaron and another music therapy client played the bells for a Summit Christmas party. After seeing the bells in action, Hanson determined that they would fit perfectly into the Summit activities programming.
“Little did she know just how popular this activity would be,” says Lagasse.
Summit Belles
After acquiring enough bells to get the activity off the ground, Hanson recruited residents to participate. Although the women started out a little slow, not quite sure of themselves, they quickly became adept at ringing handbells via the tapping method.
“This is a multi-faceted activity – it develops their hand skills, they have to listen to what's going on and everything has to flow,” says Hanson. “But, it's the group's social time, so if we mess up we just laugh. No one will know.”
The bell sets are diatonic, using just eight notes from C to C with no flats or sharps, which Lagasse says works well in terms of simplicity. This does, however, limit the Belles' musical repertoire.
“We can use music only for eight note bells,” she says. “We could add the color-coded set of five sharp bells to make ours a 13-note, chromatic bell choir. This would give us many more options for music and it is likely that we will do this in the near future. The biggest thing is, do we have enough players to do that?”
Each woman has her assigned bell colors and knows when to ring in while Lagasse plays the piano. One of the ways they learn is to follow along with words. Some are responsible for only one or two bells, while others have more.
“I’m a music teacher. That’s why they give me all these bells,” Sister Joanne Johnson asserts while gliding her hand over full scale of bells. Hanson notes that Johnson is currently the only bell player who's able to cover the range of scales on such songs as “Angels We Have Heard on High.”
A few of the Belles have some musical experience, like Evelyn Nies. She comes from a musical family and while she never read notes, she memorized her music and harmonized in the many choirs she's belonged to.
Others have very limited musical backgrounds. “I never had music when I was in school way back in 20s,” says Mildred Overgaard. “I don’t think our teacher knew how to teach music.”
“That’s the cool thing about this. Everybody can play bells, regardless of musical background,” says Lagasse. “Our one bells combine and work as a team to make a song.”
The Belles themselves rave about the bells. Marge Combs says of all the activities at the Summit – of which there are many – this is her favorite. Mathilde Moe says it's fun to actively make music rather than just listen to others perform. And centenarian Doris Albright is proud of the fact that she was able to acquire a new and exciting skill at the age of 100.
“These women are the greatest,” Lagasse says. “They are dedicated and enthusiastic and always willing to learn.”
Hanson says the Belles are still a bit shy about playing in public for venues such as nursing homes, but they did perform their Christmas repertoire for Summit residents before Christmas and for Cathedral School second graders.
“Now that we have them learning the bells, some are feeling confident to start tackling the computer,” she says. “The sky's the limit for these ladies.”
