Photo courtesy of Brynne Rurak ’23.
Brynne Rurak ’23
I think I remember specifically when I had my advancement recital, so that is when you go up with Margaret, the carillon instructor, and she shows you how to play the main bells. And before that point, you don’t play on the bells that everyone hears; you just play on the practice one. And I just remember I messed up a whole bunch. Like I did so bad, and everyone could hear it all over campus. That’s funny. It’s just like part of being in the carillonneurs — everyone can hear your mistakes. So … you got to go with the flow.
Photo courtesy of Annabel Yao ’24.
Annabel Yao ’24
In my sophomore year I wanted to be more involved on campus. I have a lot of piano background but I’m not really prepared to join orchestra or those kinds of music orgs. A couple of days after I arrived [on] campus, I heard the bell ring, and I was like where is that coming from? I didn’t even know that the carillon was an instrument before. I wanted to be artistically or musically related to some kind of like student org, and it’s just a very cool opportunity for me to really be involved in campus events to some extent. We had concerts throughout the weekend for family and friends weekend, and we had concerts through the whole Tanner Conference period, so it was like it was really fun. I felt like the bell ringing is open to a much broader audience because literally everyone on campus can hear it, so it’s less exclusive. I feel like the bell means a lot to a lot of people, it can be there for you when you’re upset, or it can be there for you when you’re sharing joy and happiness with your friends. I feel like it’s in the background of the whole Wellesley experience, and being part of that makes me feel like I’m important as well.”
Photo courtesy of Sydney Nguyen ’24.
Sydney Nguyen ’24
We’ve been going on road trips. It’s really fun to play on different carillons and it’s a different experience … it feels different from our Wellesley carillon and also to meet professional carillonneurs. It’s really cool to talk about making arrangements and other aspects of the instrument. The Guild is a really fun crew!
Photo courtesy Abby Pan ’22.
Abby Pan ’22
During exam period, during loud hour, we’ll go up and play. It’s a really fun performance because everyone’s hyped up from studying and everyone’s going a little crazy. And so a lot of times we’ll go out there and we’ll play stuff that nobody would usually play. I used to have a tradition with our old guild president who graduated last year that every reading period, we’d go up and play “Bohemian Rhapsody” together. And we’d never practice it or anything, just like, go in, try it out. See what happens. It always falls apart. It was a lot of fun.
