All my students love the time of year when they get to start learning their Christmas pieces. As soon as Halloween is over, we dive in to the Christmas piano books! We have a lot of fun learning them and they love performing them to their family and friends.
There are a number of great Christmas piano books out there and I love to have a good selection. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but I have written about my favourites:
My Favourite Christmas Piano Books
Faber & Faber: Piano Adventures Christmas Series
You may already be familiar with the Faber Piano Adventure Series which I am a big fan of – their Christmas piano book selection is equally good! They do a range of books, progressing in difficulty from PreTime Piano which is for those students just beginning to read notation; to BigTime Piano which has some lovely arrangements for an intermediate level student. There are particularly nice arrangements of Carol of the Bells and O Holy Night in the BigTime book.
The PreTime and PlayTime Christmas Piano books which are the first two in the series have some wonderful duet parts to play with a teacher or friend. My students love how it brings their piece to life and we have performed arrangements from these books many times at Christmas concerts. My particular favourites are We Three Kings of Orient Are from the PreTime book and Silent Night and A Holly Jolly Christmas from Playtime.
Faber & Faber have also published Adult Piano Adventure Christmas books 1 & 2 which are very well-arranged and have proved to be a success amongst my adult students.
Pam Wedgwood: Up-Grade! Christmas Piano Books & Christmas Jazzin’ About
Pam Wedgwood is another educator whose books I rate highly. Like the Piano Adventure Series, her Up-Grade! books are very well written and arranged. The Up-Grade! Christmas piano books come in 2 volumes roughly equivalent to the UK Grade classifications, Grades 0-1 and Grades 1-2. The selection of pieces is good, including the classics as well as a couple of her own compositions. Mince Pie Rag and the Let It Snow duet are favourites of mine.
Pam’s Christmas Jazzin’ About Series is also excellent; as well as solo piano arrangements, she has written piano duets and arrangements for woodwind and brass with piano accompaniments. Her arrangements are really good fun to play.
Nikki Iles: Jazz on a Winter’s Night Books 1 & 2
I love to play these arrangements myself – and they are a good challenge for more advanced students. I love the way Nikki has played around with the harmonies of traditional Christmas hymns and songs, turning them into really interesting jazzy versions.
There are two volumes of these books, each being at an intermediate to advanced level (or UK grades 4-7). I would say there are more pieces that fall into the latter half of that category – a Grade 4 or lower intermediate student may well find them too challenging. I absolutely love every piece in both of these books so don’t want to single any out!
Karen Marshall & David Blackwell: Get Set! Piano Christmas Crackers
This is a beautifully laid out book, containing over 30 carols, plus exercises and quizzes. Suitable for children rather than adults, the book moves progressively from beginner pieces to roughly a UK Grade 2 level. I like this aspect as it means this one Christmas book could last a student 2-3 years! There are some great duet parts to accompany some of the pieces and some fun theory exercises.
Heather Hammond: Christmas Cool Piano Duets
Great for beginner students, this book has all the festive favourites with helpful finger-number reference charts above each piece. All the pieces are simply written and have duet parts to really help bring them to life – my students love hearing the parts played together and agree that they do sound ‘cool’.
I hope you have found this post useful – please also have a look at my best piano books for adults and my recommended pop piano books for adult beginners.
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