Customer Reviews

Mel Bay's Complete Traditional Holiday Season Fake Book (Mel Bay's Complete Series)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I often play for multi-ethnic groups,this book enables me to taylor- make each performance. It contains music not only from almost every European country, but some unusual gems from South America, China, the Philippines and Japan.

This is a great book for preparing a culturally diverse program in that Levin carefully selected the music to represent many countries and cultures. Among the interesting rarities are a Huron Indian Christmas song from Canada; Christmas songs from China, the Filipines, Mexico and South America; and unusual selections from such countries as Australia, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Greece, Sweeden, Russia, Holland and Armenia. Virtually every Christian culture is represented. Many of the Jewish and Hebrew titles I've seen nowhere else!

It has a lot of classical titles that I've been meaning to get, and the arrangements are as good or better than what I've played over the years. There's a lot of attention paid to detail. And most of the songs still sound rich or complex. It has a LOT of titles. I'd recommend it.

The Christmas and Holiday songs in this book include those that we would all like to play but that most of us are unable to. This "fake" book provides a system whereby ordinary people who love this music but who have not had the musical training that they might wish they had, can play them too. The sound of these arrangements is unusually lush and authentic for arrangements of this kind. The book also contains pieces less commonly included in popular books of this kind, such as the hauntingly beautful Huron Carol, well known to Canadians such as myself but possibly less well known in other countries. Even if this were the only piece in this book, it would be well worth purchasing. In fact it contains a large selection of holiday songs.

The many new singing english translations are exceptional, A great addition to the Christmas repetoire.