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Stone’s Inn Ringers Collaborate for New Album

To celebrate their 40th anniversary as a handbell team The Inn Ringers have released their 3rd album, a joint venture with Alton Handbell Ringers.

The new set of recordings features 16 tracks taken from both team’s current concert programmes. ‘Bellissima – The Anniversary Album’ was recorded in July over two days at studios in Tunstall and Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Musical Director for the Inn Ringers, Paul Mellor explains ‘we thought it would be nice to involve another team in this venture.  We have known Alton Handbell Ringers for all their 25 years together, they use English handbells plus hand chimes – they create a different sound to the Inn Ringers’.

The two teams sound very different, both use a range of different techniques to add extra dimensions to their music, overall the album represents a wide range of music and ringing styles.

Paul goes on to say ‘although we have recorded before, you forget the amount of work that is involved in a project like this. Even sharing the work load with another team, the entire process from start to finish has taken about eight months. The actual recording days were hectic and exhausting – recording 8 tracks in one day.  We are not professional musicians, but all the ringers coped well given the tight timescales for the recording sessions’.

The Inn Ringers have experienced highs and lows during their 40th anniversary year, various issues restricted their practices at the start of the year but they managed to pull together their anniversary concert in July and raised £1400 for their chosen charity, the Alzheimer’s Society.  They will appear at the annual rally organised by the Heart of England Handbell Society in Birmingham on 21st October before ending the year with three Christmas concerts in December.

Paul says ‘ it has been a good year overall, our charity concert was a sell out and a great success and the completed recording is the icing on the cake – I think all the members of both teams are very proud of the finished album’.

Copies of the album – at £5.00 each –  can be obtained by contacting theinnringers@aol.com

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