The Art of the Piano, Volume 4

By Mark Hayes

In the fourth volume of Mark Hayes's Art of the Piano Series, he arranges contemporary Christians songs from the 90's. The arrangements are well done. The only drawback is that most people I play for are not familiar with the majority of these songs. I would like to...

learn a few of these pieces for my own enjoyment and most congregations would know and appreciate the beautiful arrangement of Mary, Did You Know? These arrangements are fairly advanced but not so difficult that they will take months to learn. Mark Hayes typically makes sure that his arrangements sound beautiful and doesn't make his pieces difficult just for difficulty's sake.

"Sing Your Praise to the Lord", "Via Dolorosa", and "God and God Alone" are my favorites. They may require some practice time before performance, but you'll enjoy every minute of your workout! In the foreword, Mark says, "There is a wideness in harmonic vocabulary and beauty to the melodic...

line which I don't always see from contemporary songwriters who only play guitar." Amen to that, brother! Mark has given us the sweep of orchestral writing performed on solo piano. Although the difficulty of the book is marked as advanced, not all of the pieces will require a long workout. "One Small Child" is very accessible for intermediate/advanced students. A tiny complaint: I wish that the editor would have begun the 8va run of measure 58 in “Via Dolorosa” to begin instead at count four of measure 57 to emphasize the repeating pattern of the run. It is jarring to "see" a downward skip in the middle of a beat of an ascending run when consistency would have been easier on the eye!