RingFest is one of, if not the, largest Handbell Festival in the Adventist world and one of the largest youth handbell festivals in the United States. It includes 18 handbell ensembles from Seventh-day Adventist schools (approximately 330 people in total) from across the eastern portion of the country and a few from the western side of the Mississippi. Students arrive on Wednesday night and set up their equipment and instruments. They practice on Thursday and Friday with multiple workshops interspersed. Friday night, there is a concert where all the groups attending ring as one group for 6 pieces. They are also encouraged to perform solo’s, duets, and other combinations. This expands the concert to about 1 ½ hours. There is a RingFest chaplain (a former principal and director) who delivers worship thoughts in between pieces to emphasis the religious nature of the Friday night service.
The mission of RingFest is to advance handbell ringing skills within the Seventh-day Adventist education system and to promote handbell musicianship as a ministry. It is a non-conference, non-union event that unites Adventist students with similar interests without regard to perceived political divides that often separates us, especially at those afore mentioned levels. We accept denominational and self-supporting Adventist schools equally. There is no connection to any college or University and no conference, union, or division provides any support, either logistically or financially.
To accomplish our mission, RingFest hires world renown clinicians. We have commissioned numerous pieces over the years, several of which were top sellers for over a year. RingFest’s concert Friday night is Live Streamed and normally has about a dozen countries watching and a multitude of states.
RingFest Archive
The archive has almost every recording of past RingFest concerts.
We no longer produce DVDs and CDs, but we freely make videos and audio available here.