International Handbell Committee - The Meeting

Today was spent in the International Handbell Committee (IHC) meeting. We started at 9:00 AM and continuted until just after 5 PM. The IHC agenda started with with a variety of policy items -welcomes, approval of minutes, review the mission and vision statements, defining criteria for membership to the IHC, and developing a policy for transacting business of the committee electronically.

We also voted to accept a new guild to the committee, bringing our total membership to 7 and adding another country to the rotation for future Symposia. The country will be officially announced at tomorrow's Opening Ceremonies - so you will need to wait until tomorrow's post to find out where the 2020 Symposium will be held. This is quite an historic occassion for the IHC - the first new member admitted since the Committee was formed.

All of the above happened before lunch.

After a wonderful lunch provide by the Handbell Ringers of Japan, we learned about the plans for the 2012 Symposium in Liverpool,UK, and the 2014 Symposium on Jeju Island of South Korea. Both will be wonderful events - for more information on Livepool visit http://www.symposium.hrgb.org.uk/. More details about 2014 will be available later - but the brochures provided about Jeju show a gorgeous island community billed as the honeymooners capital of Korea. This beautiful Pacific island paradise promises to be an ideal location for 2014.

Later in the afternoon we received reports on ringing in countries without organized guilds and about recently formed guilds. An exciting report showing handbells growing around the world with new guilds forming in Israel, China, Taiwan, and Singapore.

We concluded the meeting with discussion about ways in which members can work together to achieve the overall mission of the IHC. By the 2012 meeting, reports will be presented on work in the following areas: Supporting and strengthening ringing where it exists (either with or without and organized guild) and developing international standards of music education and promoting handbells internationally as a music education tool.

After the meeting, returning to the hotel, we began to see many more familiar faces arriving for the event. Things get started tomorrow with Opening Ceremonies at 1:00 PM, our first massed rehearsal at 2:00 PM and an evening excursion and dinner at an exoctic bird and flower garden.

The International Handbell Committee

Tomorrow I spend most of the day meeting with the International Handbell Committee (IHC). This group is made up of the six countries that share in the hosting rotation of the International Handbell Symposium - Australasia (Australia, New Zealand), Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Korea, and the U.S. The committee meets every two years at the Symposium. This makes that one meeting very intense as we try to work through two years worth of business in 8 hours. AGEHR president, John Pfeiffer, will join me in representing AGEHR at this meeting.

The Mission Statement of the IHC is the promotion of the art of handbell ringing throughout the world.

The Vision of the IHC:
We, the International Handbell Committee, share a passion for the love of music expressed through handbells. As the International Committee dedicated to this art, we articulate our vision for the future to promote:
1. communication between nations,
2. handbells as a musical art,
3. world peace through the spirit of music.

At this meeting, we will discuss ways all the member guilds can work to achieve this mission and vision. In addition, this year we will be reviewing possible additions to the committee from some newly formed guilds around the world. Since I'm uncertain what I am at liberty to share with you about this - I will withhold additional information until after the meeting (where I will get some guidance from those more knowledgeable than I on the issue).

This will be my second IHC meeting. The first was in Orlando in 2008 when AGEHR hosted the last Symposium. It is an interesting experience as we are communicating across three languages and often using a variety of meeting etiquette's - based on practices each representative is accustomed to from their own country.

I haven't seen anyone I know yet other than David and Jane Weck, who joined me for dinner this evening after their arrival this afternoon. That will change tomorrow! I'll post more pictures and details then.

Arrival

Flying into Osaka was interesting. My plane landed just before 9:00 PM and it was night time so I couldn't see much. As we made our approach to the airport, a fireworks display was underway. It was quite a site to see from the plane. I had a window seat so was able to enjoy it all. It seemed as though Osaka was celebrating out arrival.

Throughout the flight the video monitors on the plane displayed the moving map showing our progress from Seoul to Osaka. Based on that map, it appeared as though we were landing in the middle of the water of Osaka Bay. Since it was dark out, I couldn't see anything of our approach - it was black below us. I could see the lights of the city on the shore, so it definitely felt like we were about to land in the bay. Then the runway lights appeared below and we were on the ground. This morning I pulled up the map of Osaka on Google Earth and Kansai International Airport actually is its own little island in the bay connected to the shoreline by one long bridge.

The host hotel for the Symposium in the Rihga Royal Hotel - connected directly to the Grand Cube Osaka, the convention center where the event activities will take place. The Rihga Royal is a beautiful hotel. I explored a bit this morning after my "American breakfast" and discovered several restaurants offering a variety of cuisines from traditional Japanese, to French, Italian, Chinese, etc. There are also several bars, a gourmet food shop (that I will have to check out later today), and a variety of high-end retail shops offering Hermes, Lalique, and the like. Also a pharmacy, a Panasonic store, a florist and more. In addition, there are several beautiful gardens around parts of the hotel that deserve some attention later in the trip.

My room is decent size. I love that they provide comfortable cotton kimono robes. I've included a couple of pictures of my room - the kimono is neatly folded on the bed (by housekeeping - not me).

I'll add some photos of the rest of the hotel area later today.

All for now. Please post any questions or suggestions of what you would like to hear about the trip in the comments.

Introduction - in transit

My first post comes to you from the Detroit airport. I have a 3- hour lay over before my flight to Seoul. I connect to Osaka from there. I finnally arrive in Osaka at 9 PM local time. Thankfully there is nothing on my schedule until Monday morning when I join representatives of the other countries that make-up the International Handbell Committee for our bi-annual meeting. More on that later.

I plan to spend much of my 13.5 hour flight from Detroit to Osaka reviewing the stack of documents and proposals that are on the agenda for that meeting - all from my Kindle (one of the cool things about Kindle is the ability to load personal documents as pdfs). I will also be reviewing the massed ringing music and rehearsal notes from the conductors.

As this journey continues I will share details of the event and sites of Japan, post photos and video, and answer questions from you. So let me know what you want hear about by commenting on this and subsequent posts. I promise future postings will be more interesting than this one!