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OK gang. It's that time of the year to start polishing the Christmas repertoire.

Does anyone have any recommendations for New Age Christmas songbooks? Specifically, I'm looking for something in the intermediate difficulty range, but I'm sure others would like to hear any suggestions.

Thanks for your suggestions.

Oh man, you are so WAAAAYYY ahead of me!

For new age Christmas books, I like "Mannheim Steamroller -- A Fresh Aire Christmas" a lot. My favorite one to play from it is "The Holly and The Ivy."

And--although not a book--I really like a lot of David Nevue's Christmas song arrangements, especially "God rest ye merry gentlemen." You can check out sample pages and listen to them on his website, www.davidnevue.com. He also sells packages of several of his Christmas arrangements bundled together.

Mannheim Steamroller is my favorite as well but their music can get pretty advanced unless your a good sightreader. Their melodies are always unique twists to your standard favorites.

I love listening to their Christmas albums but not yet, it's too early. We still have Halloween and turkey day before the X-mas tunes start up.

How about some of the pieces from George Winston's "December" CD?

I love Winston's arrangements, but the problem is that he only has one book of sheet music published. It contains two Christmas songs, "Walking in the Air" (which is fairly easy--it skips the extended middle section of the piece that he composed) and "Carol of the Bells," which is gorgeous but hard. I've learned the first but not the second.

Thanks Monica. I knew for sure you would chime in after I titled this thread.

I'm a big fan of David Nevue's music but haven't looked at his Christmas music yet.

I love Mannheim Steamroller. I have most of their cds, but I never thought their music would translate well to piano solo arrangements. I'll have to take a closer look at their song book.

BTW, I have a 4 and 6 year old at home, so I've been listening to Christmas music since July! They are almost ready to put Christmas into high gear.

Mark

A family member mentioned that Jim Brickman has piano sheet music on the internet. MusicNotes has them I think. However, I am unsure where else they can be found. If I find places, I will update you (I plan to look soon). I agree with Monica. David Nevue is a personal favorite.

There's a book of David Lanz's holiday pieces, entitled "Christmas Eve." I think I'm going to learn something out of that book this year. Difficulty level is intermediate to advanced.

George Winston's "Joy" is a rendition of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." Technically not a Christmas piece but often performed for the holidays. It's in the George Winston piano solos book that's been published.

I'm always looking for more New Age music (holiday-oriented or not); I'm looking around too because I'll need a couple of months to get a handful of holiday pieces ready for December.

Keep the suggestions coming!

I think the tempo marking (1/4 note = 176 bpm) for "Carol of the Bells" is actually faster than George Winston played it in the recording! The piece is still effective at a little slower tempo, about 1/4 note = 144 bpm. If you can play a G minor scale in 16ths at this tempo, you should be able to learn this piece.

Colin, that's a great way to describe the technique needed for GW's Carol of the Bells.

Of course, the other thing is that it has to be consistent, sustained and all that...

GW's Carol of the Bells has been on my list of "future pieces" for a long time. And, unfortunately, I think it will have to stay on that list for at least another year! I have the score, and I take it out periodically, play it a little bit and put it away. But it's really only the tempo that makes it challenging, it's "easy as pie" to understand the music on the page. Of course, it's what happens when the music goes off the page that makes magic happen.

On the subject of other Christmas music, I played Nevue's "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" for a recital a few years back, I love that arrangment! I may bring this piece back (since I haven't kept it in my active repertoire).

I love Christmas music, new age or otherwise, so I usually try to work up a few pieces and then also play through those easy arrangements that don't really require much practice, and use those for singing etc.

I will have to check out the Mannheim Steamroller arrangements. Monica, are there any pieces in particular you recommend?

I'm a big Nevue fan too!

While searching last year about ths time I came across

"A Piano Christmas by Christopher West"

So glad I decided to buy.

A 2 CD set ..... excellent.

http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6138786/a/Piano+Christmas.htm

Shiro, the only Mannheim Steamroller I've looked at closely is the book I mentioned in my first reply. I've played a couple of pieces from it (The Holly and the Ivy, and "I saw three ships"). The others were a bit hard for me when I bought the book some years ago. I should probably dig it out real soon and see if there's anything else I could work up without too much effort.

I don't have the Lanz "Christmas Eve" book, but it sure seems intriguing. I might not be able to resist buying it.

I bought a Trans-Siberian Orchestra sheet music collection, but those transcriptions are way hard (which is good if you want something faithful to the TSO sound, but bad if you want an easier piano solo!), and the transcriptions are written for Piano-voice-guitar, which I usually find hard to work with. I bought it because it had "Wisdom of Snow" in it, which is a very easy but beautiful piano solo, and it was the piece I was most interested in playing. But it was an expensive purchase for one tiny piece!

Well, this is a nice coincidence. I just got an email today from Stanton Lanier announcing that the release of a sheet music collection for his "December Peace" album:

http://www.stantonlanier.com/decemeber-peace.php

I've bought his sheet music before, and it's nicely done (spiral bound, good heavy stock, not too hard).

I just may have to order this one, too...

Monica, thanks for introducing me to Stanton Lanier. I went to his website, and I really like his music. Best of all, I think much of it is within my playing ability (boy, haven't I said that before). I ordered his December Peace song book, so I guess I'll know for sure in a week or so.

Mark

I dusted off my copy of George Winston's "December" album so I could follow along with "Thanksgiving" (which I hope to learn for Thanksgiving). Then I listened to "Joy" and "Carol of the Bells" again.

George Winston does not play "Carol of the Bells" at the marked tempo in the Hal Leonard book (1/4 note = 172 bpm). His tempo was approximately 128 bpm throughout the entire piece. Yes, I actually checked it with a metronome.

Curious why the transcriber was so far off (44 bpm!) from the actual tempo. But if you've dreamed of playing this piece, the challenge is still there, but not quite as formidable.

The tempo marking for "Joy" was about right (1/4 note = 135 bpm).

Hint: Either I or someone else will post some type of "ABF Holiday performances" thread in Dec. We always do so why not start working on a few pieces now and get a jump on the rest of the herd.

I have a book of my Christmas arrangements called "whispers of winter"....I don't consider my style new-age but rather a contemporary/romantic. I don't have a publisher but do make my books in-office. You can e-mail me directly if you'd like more info.
Thanks for listening,
rada
www.pianopassions.com

For real?? Only 128? I am so putting this on my practice schedule for this season!

I have tried to play his arrangement of the Carol of the Bells before (from way back when you could only get a non-official transcription version), but it was always too fast.

Now, in the last two years, almost every piece I've worked on have been purposely chosen to push the limits of my ability to play at faster tempi (heh, I said tempi). Some of the music I've worked through has had MM markings of quarter note =132 and 154 (with loads of 16th notes). So I am looking at the score for the Carol of the Bells and thinking "128? piece of cake!"

Of course, I am also looking at the LH and thinking "cramp!" Almost no change throughout! Yikes!

And then there's the piece I'm working on right now, which is only MM=60 for the quarter note, and when I get to the section that's all 16th notes in both hands, I still stutter. But, on the flip side, I got that section up to tempo in a much shorter amount of time than I would have been able to two years ago. (Monica, I'm talking about the last bit of Galloway's Canon of course!)

Also, re the Winston version of the Carol of the Bells, at least there's no "funny stuff" in the score, like no runs of 5s or 7s, I hate trying to figure out how to play something like that, especially when it's supposed to be super fast! And then there's always something whacky going on in the left hand, so there are no rhythm hints to be had anywhere, and since it's supposed to be played at something like MM=132, you can't even tell what it is when you're playing it way down at MM=46. :p

Hmm, 128 huh? That makes it definitely worth looking at the Carol again. Thanks for the info Colin!

I think I'm also going to re-work up Nevue's God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (did I say that back on page one of this thread??)

I just received Stanton Lanier's "December Peace" songbook and have started to work on his arrangement of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." I am having great fun learning it. Here is Stanton himself playing it.

Stanton Lanier - Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring

I am tempted to check out Lanier, but someone please stop me!! I have too much on my list as it is!

So, I worked on Winston's Carol of the Bells a little bit tonight...

Here is why that piece is going to be really hard. The LH quarter notes. It's not the RH, which has to play flying 16th notes and do other challenging.

It's the LH, which is much too far to the right for my liking, the LH score is in treble clef for the whole piece! And it's just repeating the same quarter note pattern (which a few exceptions).

If anyone has played Tiersen's "Comptine..something something apres midi". whatever the French title is :p Anyway, Winston's Carol of the Bells presents a similar challenge.

We'll see how long I last (i.e. whether I learn it or end up puttin it away for Christmases future!)

I have the middle part for Winston's Snowman, which is not difficult at all, but makes the whole piece much more interesting. So maybe in November I'll start that and Nevue's GRYMG.

If I start a "Carol of the Bells" thread, will you guys read it?