AREA 7 FESTIVAL HANDBELL CONFERENCE

Alex Guebert is a composer, arranger, percussionist, music director and music teacher from Orange, California.
He directs five handbell groups in the area; among those are two advanced-level groups:
Cathedral Bells of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Orange, and L.A. Bronze. His compositions and arrangements have been published and performed nationwide and overseas. Alex’s compositional style is a result of his background as a percussionist, his love of film score, and his desire to broaden the horizons of handbell repertoire.

Alex holds a bachelor’s degree in percussion from Concordia University Irvine, and an M.M. in Music Composition
from Cal State Long Beach, where his graduate recital featured a 25-minute work for handbells, strings, and percussion, titled “Ransom”. His recent piece, “Out of the Silent Planet”, won the Bells of the Cascades (Portland, OR) 25th Anniversary Composition
Contest and was played at Distinctly Bronze East in 2017 under the baton of Dr. William Payn. Alex has studied conducting with Dr. Payn, Dr. Herbert Geisler (Concordia University Irvine), and Ramona Miller (former director of Cathedral Bells).

He teaches music classes and leads band programs at schools in Orange County, and has taught several mallet technique and percussion classes at handbell seminars in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, and California. Married in 2014, Alex spends most of his free time adventuring with his wife Heather, bicycling around Southern California.

Alex will conduct the Bronze Division, two of the Massed pieces, and the Bronze Plus Ensemble.

Lee J. Afdahl is the Director of Music Emeritus of First Presbyterian Church of Rochester, Minnesota.  A graduate of Luther College, Decorah, IA, Lee is a church musician with fifty years of experience in leading active programs of choral and handbell ensembles in Michigan and Minnesota.

Lee Afdahl is frequently a conductor and clinician for handbell conferences, choral workshops, and church music conferences internationally.  He has conducted festival conferences for the Handbell Musicians of America at the local, area, and national levels, for handbell classes of American Guild of Organists, Fellowship of United Methodists, Presbyterian Association of Musicians, and international handbell events in England, Japan,  South Korea, and Australia.

Mr. Afdahl has served the Handbell Musicians of America as Michigan Chair for Area 5, Chair of Area 7, and is a Past President of the national board of the organization.  He represented the organization as a conductor at the International Handbell Symposia in Adelaide, Australia in 1994, Liverpool, UK in 2012 and Jeju, South Korea in 2014.  Lee has taught intermediate and advanced conducting for HMA Seminars, and currently teaches conducting for certification for HMA.   Lee is an active organ recitalist and published composer and arranger of handbell, instrumental, and choral music with over one hundred compositions and arrangements in print.

Lee will conduct the Conference Choir Ensemble.

Bells of the Bluffs handbell ensemble is devoted to sharing their passion for handbells with people of all ages. Their ringers come from communities throughout southeastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. They provide performance, workshop and audience participation experiences to help spread the joy of handbells. Since Bells of the Bluffs was founded in 2013, they have been building their skills as individuals and an ensemble with a broad range of music and helping others expand their ringing abilities and appreciation for handbell music.  Marilee Anderson, Music Director.