Topic: Chanukah and other "holiday" pieces (Read 1123 times)

calabi_yau · on: November 05, 2010, 11:12:16 AM

I used to play at retirement centers sometimes and I'm thinking about doing a "holiday" recital this year. I wasn't able to find many good arrangements of Christmas carols - they're all for like an early/intermediate level - so I decided to try to do the piano arrangement of the Nutcracker Suite instead (which I kind of like better anyway). I figured I should end off with a Jewish piece, just, you know, for variety. Do you think it has to be specifically a Chanukah song, or can it just be kind of, you know, hava nagila or some other hora?

I know it doesn't strictly make sense for me to play something like that, but then the Nutcracker isn't blatantly Christmas music, and anyway I dunno if we should implicitly sort of treat Chanukah like "the Jewish Christmas". Plus I really like horas.

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions for a particular arrangement of a festive Jewish piece? As with the Christmas carols, I'm having trouble finding any arrangements for piano other than the very simple ones. Or just any suggestions for "multicultural" holiday pieces in general - Muslim, Hindu, Kwanzaa-related, whatever. Again, I really need it to be a piano solo of decent complexity - not just like a single melody line or chords or something. I possess no ability to improvise.

Thanks!

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