the directors
Alex Guebert
Alex Guebert is a composer, arranger, music director, clinician, percussionist, and organist from Orange, CA. He is the Director of Worship and Music at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Orange. Handbells are a particular passion for Alex. He directs two advanced-level handbell groups: Cathedral Bells (at St. John’s, since 2013) and Concert Handbells at Concordia University Irvine (since 2018). He previously directed the LA Bronze Ensemble, from 2014-2022. His award-winning handbell compositions and arrangements have been published and performed nationwide and overseas.
Alex’s compositional style is a result of his background as a percussionist, his love of film and video game scores, and his desire to broaden the horizons of handbell repertoire. Alex holds an M.M. in Music Composition from Cal State Long Beach, where his graduate recital featured a 25-minute work for handbells, strings, and percussion. Some of Alex’s most recent forays into the national scene of handbells include teaching classes at Handbell Musicians of America national and local seminars and leading several mass ringing events nationwide, as well as being chosen to compose the Bay View Week of Handbells “Allured Commission” piece for 2023.
Besides handbells, Alex enjoys composing/arranging for piano, organ, choir, and orchestra, as well as planning creative worship services. He also co-hosts and co-produces a podcast, A Moment of Bach, with his brother Christian, on which they talk about their favorite magical moments of music by J. S. Bach. Alex lives in Orange with his wife Heather who works as a forensic scientist in the Orange County Crime Lab, and two daughters, Emma Joy and Cora Noelle, who both already seem to share their dad’s love of music and their mom’s scientific curiosity about the world!
Matthew Compton
Matthew Compton, a native of Colorado Springs, CO has been composing, arranging, and conducting music for handbells since 2007, when he was in the 8th grade. He had his first composition published at the age of 15, making him one of the youngest published handbell composers. Matthew graduated from Concordia University Wisconsin with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Music with an emphasis in Composition and Conducting.
Based now in Vancouver, WA, he is the music director of Bells of the Cascades in Portland, OR, Director of Music Ministries at Salmon Creek Church in Vancouver, and recently has become the new Artistic Director of Pikes Peak Ringers in Colorado Springs. Along with Alex Guebert, Matthew also co-directs Zenith, a new double handbell ensemble that is made up of 30 auditioned musicians from around the world each year. In addition to being a guest clinician at handbell festivals across the country, his music is frequently used at local and national handbell festivals, like the Bay View Week of Handbells and Distinctly Bronze East and West. In his limited spare time, Matthew can occasionally be found streaming a variety of games and music performances on Twitch, going hiking, or enjoying any number of movies, anime, or TV shows!