Popular Performer -- It's Time for Christmas

The Best Christmas Hits and Traditional Holiday Selections

By Kenon D. Renfrow

It's true that about three of these songs have sort of a modern evangelical church service sound to them. That isn't a bad thing. If you have ever attended an evangelical modern service, those three songs sound straight out of one. The others with the more common titles...

are more jazzy and a few even have kind of a "tea for two" type of style going on with the left hand. It's a good book. Sight-readable at a modern tempo for advanced players. Playing the pieces up to speed would require a few days of practice for advanced players.

these arrangements seem slapped together. for example, winter wonderland, which appears to be several pages long, is really only 2 pages long if you consider a) all the written out repeats, and b) the big variation in which renfrow put the first verse into octaves with everything otherwise identical including...

the little fills which by the 3rd repetition start to really grate. all of the arrangements are similarly repetitive and unimaginative plus, this is not advanced, its intermediate which is another irritant. throwing in octaves doesnt make it advanced, it makes it a slapped together attempt to pretend something new is happening, when in fact nothing new is happening, other than of course, the octaves. boo hiss i give it two stars because the first page of every song is good, and then - nothing happens.

I have been playing piano for 8 years. I play hymn style, some classical, and lots of arranged music. I was trying to find some Christmas music at a level challenging enough to be worthwhile, and this book turned out to be perfect. It has a nice balance of Christian...

and secular songs, and the arranger did a great job' jazzing up' "Let it Snow".