Paul W. Allen, a California native and the elder of two children, was

reared in Escalon, in the San Joaquin Valley.  The only son of a cemetery

manager and a registered nurse, he graduated in 1969 from La Verne

College (now, the University of La Verne, La Verne, California) with a B.A.

in a humanities distributive major, with extensive experience and

participation in drama, music and journalism.  In 1972 he matriculated with

a Masters of Divinity from Bethany Theological Seminary, Oak Brook,

Illinois, and then served three years as a pastoral minister to the Bethel

Church of the Brethren in southeast Nebraska.  He returned to California

in 1975 and earned a second B.A. in Music/Drama at California State University, Sacramento (CSUS),

earning his teaching credential in 1981.

Becoming Minister of Music at Prince of Peace Church, Sacramento, in 1981, he brought their choral

music program to new heights.  This choir performed regularly for the community and staged children's

musicals.  At the same time, he began work at the Sacramento Job Corps Center in south Sacramento,

a facility funded by the Department of Labor to help young adolescents receive their high school

equivalency and learn a trade.  There he became a full time counselor to teenagers.

At Prince of Peace Church he also founded The Bells of Peace, a handbell choir, in 1984.  During this

same time he began teaching music full time at the James Rutter Middle School (JRMS), in the Elk Grove

Unified School District, instructing band, chorus, handbells and general music.  He founded The Concert

Carillons Handbell Choir, the school's handbell choir, and the only handbell program in a secondary

school in all of northern California.  He is currently a co-department leader of the arts at JRMS.

In the fall of 1987, Paul married Susan Elizabeth Coddington, a bell ringer and bass clarinetist whom he

met at a handbell performance.  From 1980 to 1988, he played low brass with The El Dorado Brass

Band of Old Sacramento, a group of eighteen "Civil War" musicians, principally featuring brass music

of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  He also played first trombonist with the American

River College Symphonic Band, under the direction of Dr. Lester Lehr, composing and arranging some

of their performance pieces.

Paul is active in many community music affairs.  He has been an annual director of the Sacramento

Recorder Society, as well as a member of their Board of Directors.  Since 1985, he has served as the

Coordinator of the Sacramento Area Handbell Directors Association (HANDS), often their mass director

and, with his wife, coordinator of their annual Spring Ring, a gathering of more than thirty handbell choirs

from the area performing handbell music.

Paul composes as time allows, spending most of his time in this regard on advanced music for handbells,

specifically for RiverBells.  Among many other works, he has had Carol for the Child/Lament for the

Lamb published by National Music, and A Simple Sonata published by The American Guild of English

Handbell Ringers (AGEHR).  Sonore Sonette premiered at the Tenth Annual Spring Ring on March 27,

1993, and Éloge (dedicated to his father) premiered June 20, 1994 at the Area XII Handbell Festival in

Visalia, California.  A breakthrough in the handbell art was his Rhapsody for Band and Bells, an unusually

long and difficult composition for 5-octave handbell choir and full symphonic band - the first composition

for such an array of musical forces.  Paul has been published by Bronze f/x, Laurendale Press, National

and Allen-Myers Musicals.

Paul is often called to conduct handbell workshops.  He served on the Board of Directors for Area XXII,

AGEHR from 1994 to 1996.  In 1999 he earned his Master of Music in Music Composition.  Many of the

works composed during his three years of graduate study at CSUS were performed by the 59th Army

National Guard Band and the Bel Tempo Handbell Ensemble at his graduate composition recital on the

CSUS campus.  In 2000, he was admitted into the membership of the Delta Xi Chapter of Pi Kappa

Lambda, a national honor society for music.  He was elected president of the newly formed Sacramento

Symphonic Winds in 2002, under the continuing direction of Dr. Lehr.

In the fall of 1998 he founded RiverBells, a community handbell ensemble, originally sponsored by

Cosumnes River College and later by the Elk Grove Unified School District.  This new ensemble,

featuring some of the best adult ringers in the area, has twice performed with the American River

College Symphonic Band.  They plan future performances with the Sacramento Symphonic Winds,

and in command performances at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts and the Vacaville Center

for the Performing Arts.

If you would like more information regarding RiverBells or handbell music

in general, please contact Paul W. Allen, RiverBells' Director, at

pwallen@riverbells.org or via the link below.

Music:  Valse les Adieux

Karen Buckwalter (1997)