Ringing in Your Ears

A beautiful end-of-summer evening, a holiday weekend, a free outdoor concert by a world-class musician – it all came together on Labor Day for the final 7 Mondays at 7 carillon recital at UM’s Burton Tower.

Several dozen people showed up to hear Steven Ball play songs ranging from Ravel’s La Vallee des Cloches to a Wizard of Oz medley, as children played in the Ingalls Mall fountain and students strolled by.

Like many of the folks sitting in folding chairs or on blankets around Ingalls Mall, David and Marilyn Cummins brought a picnic dinner to eat before the show. They said they came to the concert just to get out of the house and do something. “Then we’ll know we’ve had a holiday,” Marilyn laughed.

“And the price is right,” David added.

Before playing his final piece, Ball emerged from the tower to collect audience suggestions for an improvised selection, and invited people to come up and watch him play. That was a special treat – typically, carillonists don’t let the public into the inner sanctum during a performance.

More than a dozen people made the trek to the tower’s 10th floor, an open-air spot except for the Baird Carillon “keyboard,” which is in a small enclosed room (decorated with a few plastic bats). Huge bells along the walkway form the bottom tier of two octaves of bells that rise above in gradually decreasing size. It’s a deafening place to be during a performance, but the views of Ann Arbor and UM’s campus can’t be beat.

If you didn’t catch this concert – or even if you did – you can hear Ball play regularly at the Michigan Theater, where he is the staff theater organist. Tonight, he’ll be accompanying the silent film “Battleship Potemkin.” The show starts at 7 p.m.