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Bell project to toll Sept. 19

Synchronized ringing of bells begins at 7 p.m.

by MEGAN GLOSS, River Stages

Patrick Hazell gives a new meaning to the hills being alive with the sound of music. From 7 to 8 p.m. Sept. 19 Hazell will present the Dubuque Bell Project, an original composition featuring the synchronized ringing of the bells in seven downtown Dubuque churches.

The churches include St. Raphael's Catholic Church, St. Mary's Catholic Church, St. Patrick's Catholic Church, St. John's Lutheran Church, St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, St. Luke's Methodist Church and The First United Congregational Church of Christ.

"The bell projects are my invention," Hazell says. "I get the approval of a number of churches, or other establishments having steeples with large bells in them - old fire stations or school houses - to ring their large bells."

Hazell assembles a crew of bell ringers and divides them into teams for each bell site.

"They go to the sites and proceed to ring the bells according to a timed schedule that I map out," Hazell says. "The ringing lasts for one hour, and the pattern will shift during that time. Sometimes there will only be one bell heard, then maybe three, four or five, sometimes all of them. "What is created is a shifting pattern of overtones and modal changes that is continuous for the entire hour over an area of 10 to 15 blocks. Of course, the bells echo throughout the downtown area and off of the Mississippi valley walls, which surround the to the immediate west. "They can often be heard miles away depending on the wind and natural reflective surfaces like hills and cliffs."

The Dubuque Bell Project marks Hazell's seventh bell project since February 2003. "I have planned and produced six bell projects," he says. "Five in Burlington, Iowa, and one in Russia in the capital of the Udmurt Republic, Izhevsk, involving the bells of two Russian Orthodox Cathedrals and an 18th century armaments factory - it's bell tower was erected when the Russians defeated Napoleon in 1812."

For more information on Hazell and the Bell Ringing Project, visit www.patrickhazell.com.