- In this edition of "Arteffects," kick off the holidays with Spirit of the Season.

(festive orchestra music) - [Jason] It's a really big production, and it's really gratifying that Reno has really allowed me to usher in the Christmas season.

(dramatic orchestra music) (audience applauding and cheering) - [Beth] A Reno handbell ensemble.

- [Barb] This is not your grandma's handbell choir.

We like to do a lot of different genres.

We don't stick to just classical or just pieces written for bells.

(mellow handbell music) - [Beth] The Reno Philharmonic celebrates a big milestone.

- What I've asked Joe to do is write a piece of music that is in celebration of the Reno Philharmonic's 50th year.

- [Beth] And a multi-genre violinist.

(mellow groove music) ♪ I ran my credit card bill up - The stuff I'll be working on can range from house music to jazz.

It can be country, it can be fiddling.

It's whatever feels good or is inspiring.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "Arteffects."

(upbeat groove music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors.

Meg and Dillard Myers.

In memory of Sue McDowell.

The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Chris and Parky May.

And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno Members.

- Hello, I'm Beth Macmillan and welcome to "Arteffects."

It's the holiday season, and the Reno Philharmonic really knows how to get everyone into the spirit with their annual concert "Spirit of the Season."

But this concert is more than just an orchestral performance, it involves a lead singer, a chorus, a handbell ensemble, a line of tap dancers, and more.

Let's learn about this extravagant performance and get into the Spirit of the Season.

(festive orchestra music) ♪ Its the spirit of the season.

♪ - Spirit of the Season is our annual holiday kickoff.

- It's an opportunity for our community members to kick off the celebration of the Christmas season.

- [Jason] Where we do all of your holiday favorites with the Reno Phil Chorus and also some local talent.

- [Jennie] We've had dogs, jugglers, hula hoopers, all sorts of community musicians performing, and just a big celebration of the Christmas season.

- It's a really big production, and it's really gratifying that Reno has really allowed me to usher in the Christmas season and kinda be their ambassador for the holidays.

(dramatic orchestra music) (audience applauding and cheering) Reinventing the program every year is pretty tricky.

There really are a lot of moving parts.

We do plan it very carefully so the pace of the show doesn't have any dead time.

We wanna just have go, go, go, and have a real brisk pace.

- It's fun to be a part of Spirit of the Season, but it's a lot of hours of work Then concert week, we're there Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights, rehearsing with the orchestra.

And it's a big commitment of time, but I think all of them would say the performance is worth it.

- Working with professional musicians, it's a lot of fun, 'cause they can do everything, they can do every style.

And the Reno Phil, it's a pretty good band.

(Jason laughing).

(gentle festive music) Welcome back to Reno, Whitney Claire Kaufman.

I think long and hard about every program that I do every year.

I want something I know that I would enjoy conducting, but that I also think that the orchestra would enjoy performing as well as the singers.

♪ The best Christmas ♪ The best Christmas of all (upbeat festive music) (audience cheering and applauding) - The process of picking our pieces that the chorus is gonna collaborate with the orchestra on is similar, yet, different every year.

There's often a theme to Spirit of the Season.

This year, it's "Music at the Movies."

And Jason and I, at first, were like, okay, choruses in movies go like, (Jennie imitating opera singing) and that's not very interesting for the chorus to do.

And then we broadened that out a little bit.

One of the pieces that the chorus is highlighted on is "Thankful" by Josh Groban, and it really is touching about what we all have to be thankful for.

♪ Even with our differences ♪ There is a place we're all connected ♪ ♪ Each of us can find each others light ♪ ♪ Each of us can find each others light ♪ - And now for something completely different.

(audience laughing) Now, these talented musicians, you know, they're with us every Spirit of the Season.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, under the direction of Barb Walsh, "Tintabulations."

(audience applauding) (gentle handbell music) - Tintabulations Handbell Ensemble is a group of people who play English handbells.

Handbells are individually pitched, so one note is one handbell.

So if you imagine an entire piano keyboard, and you take all the keys off and you spread them out, that's what all the bells are.

(gentle handbell music) For this year's Spirit of the Season, Tintab is gonna play a solo, "Mary Did You Know," and then we'll be playing with a Philharmonic, "Gloria Hodie."

(gentle handbell music) (dancers tapping rhythmically) (audience cheering) - We have our own little kick line, Kia Crader and Fascinating Rhythm.

Every year she auditions high kicking dancers.

- We called ourselves Santa's Tappers, which were representing the Rockettes.

("Santa Baby") (dancers tapping rhythmically) The biggest challenge that we initially had was we had some fast tap dancers one year, you know, we set the choreography to the kicks at the end because it's very aerobic, lots of kicks, you have to kick high, and so it has to be set, the tempo for the kicks.

And one year, and this is the thing with working with live orchestra, some of the dancers were just a little ahead of the beat.

And so then Jason was like, oh, we must be lagging, so he started going faster.

And I was sitting in the sound booth and I was going, oh my goodness, they're going faster.

When you have canned music, the beat's not gonna change.

But when you have live music and the dancers are are little ahead of it, then that's a huge challenge.

("Santa Claus Is Coming Town") Performing with a a live orchestra is such a rare opportunity, and to be able to provide that to dancers is really a unique experience, and I'm really happy that I can be a part of that.

And there's such a give and take of energy because the orchestra is giving you energy, you know, you're giving energy and it's, really, a collaborative feeling on stage of everybody representing the performing arts in some form or fashion.

And then the audience is giving you feedback.

It's an extraordinary experience.

("Santa Claus Is Coming Town") (audience cheering) - Oh my gosh, the audience reaction at Spirit of the Season is just fantastic.

As you look out into the audience and hear these kids all dressed up, and families dressed up and excited to start the Christmas season.

♪ A white Christmas - The audience is probably the most wonderful part, but they're super responsive.

They seem to really enjoy it and it's, I mean, and there's, I don't know how many, 1000, more than that.

So, you know, that's kind of an adrenaline rush.

- We're thrilled that the audience is thrilled when we come out.

When we first started, we didn't think we'd be doing it very often, and so we were really surprised.

We appreciate the audience and their reaction to us because we have become a part of their tradition as well.

- And I tell the chorus every year, I know that we sing the the title piece, "Spirit of the Season," every year, but somebody's never heard it before.

And for some people that is just the official start of Christmas for them.

Coming to hear the Spirit of the Season concert is like, ah, it's Christmas.

♪ And may all your Christmases be white ♪ ("White Christmas") (audience cheering) - [Performers] Merry Christmas.

- Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, happy holidays, everybody.

- To learn more about the Reno Phil, or to join the volunteer chorus, visit RenoPhil.com.

Tintabulations, the handbell ensemble you just saw in Spirit of the Season, has been playing in Reno for more than 20 years.

They've been breaking stereotypes with their year-round performances featuring members young and old.

- Handbells are an interesting instrument.

(upbeat handbell music) - People think handbells are only played at Christmas.

A lot of people think that bells are only in church and they aren't.

- To learn the basic technique of a handbell is actually very simple.

You pick up the bell, you make sure it's facing the right direction, that always is important.

Double check to make sure you have the right bell in your hand.

And then you just do a quick flick of a wrist and it'll ring.

- Like with a piano, it's like taking off a piano key and handing it to someone, and then taking off another key and handing it to somebody else, and handing it to somebody else.

(mellow handbell music) Each bell has a pitch, just like each key on a piano is a certain pitch, a certain note.

And just like, you know, tuba plays really low notes, and a piccolo plays really high notes, size is relative.

So the small bells play, the high pitches and the really big bells play the low pitches.

(upbeat handbell music) (crowd cheering and clapping) If you just walked in off the street thinking, wow, what is this whole Tintabulations handball thing, what you would see is a group of very energetic, very good musicians helping you to have a great time and show you millions of things to do with this instrument that you probably have never seen before.

And go, wow, I did not know you could do that.

("Can You Tell Me How to Get to Sesame Street") - How did Tintabulations get their name?

Someone had heard the word tintinnabulation, which is a rough translation of what a handbell would be in Latin.

So they said, "Barb, what's that word?"

And she didn't really know, so she tried to conjugate it herself from her understanding of Latin and she missed.

So instead of Tintinnabulations, we got Tintabulations.

(mellow handbell music) - This is not your grandma's handbell choir.

We like to do a lot of different genres.

We don't stick to just classical or just pieces written for bells.

(mellow handbell music) I think it's a unique art form because of the dependency upon other people to make the beautiful sounds.

- The thing that makes Tintab fun is that they're passionate about ringing.

We all have different skill levels.

There's different people who are better at different things, but in the end, the focus is always on making music.

- It's a big time investment.

(mellow handbell music) We rehearse three hours a week.

- We do about 20 to 30 performances a year.

You really feed off an audience's energy.

- I would like to have enriched their lives in some way through the performance.

- The best thing we can do as a handball ensemble is to make one new person in the audience come back or even become a ringer.

(handbell drones) - See more from Tintabulations at Tintabulations.com.

In 2019, the Reno Philharmonic reached a milestone anniversary.

They celebrated their 50th year by performing a new piece of music that was composed just for that occasion.

Let's join the Phil and the composer to see their process to make this symphonic celebration.

(somber orchestra music) - The Reno Phil has been really fortunate to have a relationship with composer Zhou Tian.

He's really one of the great up and coming composers in the world today.

- I love his music.

I love the way he writes for the orchestra.

It is intelligent.

I love the way his music communicates immediately to an audience, even when they've never heard the work before.

(somber orchestra music) - Reno has a great vibe as a city and just a community of music lovers because it's so vibrant.

Everyone I talk to, they love music.

They tell you how much they enjoy the music, not only sometimes on my piece, but also on the general repertoire.

They know quite a bit of classical music, and that's very good for a classical musician.

You know, they will tell you, oh, I like your piece, and certain parts of that remind me of the Tchaikovsky "Violin Concerto."

So I can always have a really cool conversation with local audience who come up to me after the concert.

So I really love that.

- There is something so beautiful happening in this union of this community with this composer.

And frankly, it's even beyond what I had hoped.

What is beginning, what is brewing.

(somber orchestra music) What I've asked Zhou to do is, number one, write a piece of music that is in celebration of the Reno Philharmonic's 50th year.

The next thing I've asked him to do is to write it on the topic of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, which also celebrates an important anniversary, it's 150th, the same year the Phil celebrates its 50th.

The reason I have chosen to bring those two topics together is because whenever I seek to create new art, I want it to be instantly deeply meaningful to the people for whom it is created.

People that have been in Reno all their life and love the history of this town, know that Reno would never have been Reno without the Transcontinental Railroad.

Just the history of our nation as a whole is so dependent on this development, the completion of this entity that connected us as a nation and really made us what we are.

(dramatic orchestra music) - The team at Reno was very kind to take me to the Donner Pass, and I was completely moved by this powerful, really powerful piece of history.

- It's one thing to read about the Chinese laborers going in there with their hand carts and their hand drills, to walk in that space and to see with your own eyes where they were chipping, and chiseling, and blowing up the rocks just gives weight to the scale of this project.

- We went up to just see what that was and to be in that space, and to walk through those, you know, hand hewn tunnels.

And it was really powerful.

I had never been up there.

I've lived here for 23 years and had never, you know, taken the 45 minute drive up to go do that.

And it was really moving.

And to do that with the composer, and to watch his eyes light up, and to watch him sort of take it all in and start imagining how what he's experiencing will impact and inform what he writes, is really fascinating.

And so I can't wait to hear how he translates that into sound.

- It was exciting to see Zhou's wheels start turning as we crunched through the gravel and experience the echo of that tunnel.

(gravel crunching) - As a composer, sound is always very important to me, I'm sensitive to different kinds of sound.

And as we were walking in the tunnel, the sound people were making stepping on these old rocks, I felt that could be part of the piece.

So I will find a way to incorporate that into the new piece.

I told Laura, the music director, yesterday, "The piece I'm about to write in my mind just got a lot bigger."

This just made the piece bigger in my mind.

In terms of scale, in terms of depth of emotional feelings.

Because of that trip seeing the Donner Pass.

- We kind of think it's important to say we are a vital, alive organization.

We're gonna play the music of Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, and Mendelssohn, and we are also gonna play the music of Zhou Tian, and Philip Glass, and Steve Reich, and Michael Gandolfi, and these wonderful new composers who are making new sound worlds that can shed a light on the world in a new way.

And hopefully, in a way that is really relevant.

And of course, that's what we're hoping with our new piece, to bring something to Reno that is completely from this community.

(dramatic orchestra music) (audience clapping) - Find the Reno Phil's upcoming performances at RenoPhil.com.

PBS Reno created a full length documentary about the Reno Phil to commemorate their 50 year anniversary.

You can watch it at PBSreno.org/workofart.

Muzelle is a multi genre violinist and multidisciplinary artist.

Although she's classically trained, she works in other genres like jazz and house music.

We visit the artist during a performance at a contemporary art exhibit in Florida and find out more about her creative journey.

(mellow hip hop music) (mellow violin music) (mellow hip hop music) - Because this exhibit is really focused on that feeling of home and what it means to grow up in Miami and grow up in this community, I decided it would be really nice to incorporate a lot of songs and music that is familiar to people from my generation growing up in like the early 2000s to 2010s.

What would it have felt like when you came home from school in elementary, or what would've been playing on the radio when you were in high school?

So I really wanted to focus on that so it feels authentic to home.

♪ I ran my credit card bill up ♪ Thought a new dress would make it better ♪ ♪ I tried to work - My name is Lee, I go by the artist named Muzelle, and I'm a professional multi-genre and interdisciplinary violinist.

So I am classically trained, but as an artist, as I've grown in postgraduate, I've really branched out into more eclectic sound performance and music.

So the stuff I'll be working on can range from house music, to jazz, it can be country, it can be fiddling, it's whatever feels good or is inspiring.

And it's usually collaborative work because I love learning from other people.

And that's how I get to discover these new things that are outside of just a classical situation.

(mellow violin music) ♪ But it's like cranes in the sky ♪ ♪ Sometimes I don't wanna feel those metal clouds ♪ (mellow violin music) - I started out in performing arts school from like elementary to high school, and that was very traditional for the most part.

Like there's certain rules of classical music.

You don't improv, you're not adding things to stuff, you're doing the repertoire as it's written and the way it was intended to be played from like 200 years ago.

But what was special was that all of my conductors were band people.

At the core, they were band musicians.

So they still had that little bit of creativity where, although we were performing and learning music in a very specific format, they still brought something else that made me curious.

And that's where that curiosity started.

It's consistently changing, it's consistently evolving, but definitely in the realm of performance art, that's something that I really enjoy.

So if you see me around, it's definitely gonna be in this capacity.

Collaborative projects, performance art, that's really what I enjoy and that's where I love spending my time.

♪ But its like cranes in the sky, doo-doo, doo, doo, doo ♪ ♪ Sometimes I don't wanna feel those metal clouds ♪ (mellow violin music) ♪ Yeah, it's like cranes in the sky, doo-doo, doo, doo, doo ♪ ♪ Sometimes I don't wanna feel those metal clouds ♪ - Hear more at Instagram.com/Muzelle _.

And that wraps it up for this edition of "Arteffects."

If you want to watch new "Arteffects" segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel.

And don't forget to keep visiting PBSreno.org to watch complete episodes of "Arteffects."

Until next week, I'm Beth Macmillan.

Thanks for watching.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors.

Meg and Dillard Myers.

In memory of Sue McDowell.

The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

Chris and Parky May.

And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(mellow synth music) (upbeat groove music)