Event: Carillon Recital

6:30pm, September 24th

Carillonneur Jesse Ratcliffe will perform a recital at 6:30 p.m. Friday, September 24, on the Christ Church carillon, marking the dedication of two bells we recently added to the historic instrument. Ratcliffe will play a wide array of music set for carillon, ranging from traditional songs and hymn tunes to works by Scott Joplin and the French Baroque composer Jean-Joseph Mouret. 

Weighing more than 1,200 and 900 pounds, respectively, the new bells are a memorial to Clair Holland, our volunteer carillonneur for nearly 40 years. A much-beloved educator who taught at Greenbrier Elementary School for almost two decades, Clair passed away in 2017 at the age of 93. The recital will include a new setting of the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” arranged by John Gouwens, also in memory of Clair. Today her daughter, Clair Robison, serves as our carillonneur.

Currently the choirmaster and organist at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest in Abilene, Texas, Ratcliffe has served as carillonneur of the Luray Singing Tower and at Hollins University in Virginia.  He is also the former choral director of the Staunton Choral Society. His work as a recitalist has been heard in numerous venues, among them the Edinburgh International Music Festival. He is a native of Hinton, West Virginia, and holds a bachelor’s degree from Concord University and a master of music degree from Shenandoah Conservatory in Winchester, Virginia. 

The carillon in the Christ Church belltower is one of only five carillons in Virginia and the only one in the state in an independent church. It comprises 23 bells that were cast soon after World War II by Gillett & Johnston of Croydon, England, a foundry that produced some of the finest bells in the world. The two new bells, a low C-sharp and a low D-sharp, fill out the instrument’s two-octave range and were cast by the B. A. Sunderlin Bellfoundry of Ruther Glen, Virginia.