I can’t begin to tell you how excited I was to be asked to help get the transcriptions ready for this sheet music collection of David Lanz’s Liverpool, Re-Imagining the Beatles! Now that the book is available and I have it in my hands, I have to say that it’s beautiful! Playing through the finished product is even more exciting! It is virtually impossible to transcribe an ensemble recording note-for-note for all of the instruments and make it playable as solo piano, so the task at hand was to keep the essentials of each of David Lanz’s arrangements and to create a songbook that pianists could enjoy for many years to come. I think this book has achieved that goal splendidly!

All eight tracks from the Liverpool CD are included, and because several of the pieces are medleys, there are parts of many more songs than that. The pieces are not simple, but they are far from virtuosic - late-intermediate and early-advanced players should have little trouble mastering them. A few songs are lively, but nothing is what I would consider fast. There are no difficult key signatures, although there are some wonderful chords that you don’t come across in everyday playing. A few songs have chords that reach more than an octave, but pianists with smaller hands can roll them or, if necessary, remove a note. The notation is an easily-readable size with lots of white paper showing, so none of these songs look intimidating. They range in length from six pages to twenty, with a few at 13-16 pages

There are plenty of piano arrangements of Beatles’ songs out there, but David really put himself into this music since it has been such a big part of his life and such an influence on his own compositions. While the songs are all very recognizable, these are fresh interpretations that update them without delivering them into easy-listening oblivion. Those of us who grew up with this music will enjoy it immensely, and this book should also be a great introduction for younger people who are not as familiar with the music. The bottom line is that the music sounds great and is a lot of fun to play! It is available from davidlanz.com, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and sheetmusicplus.com. Recommended!!