Winter & Christmas CD
Richard Banks, Christmas Reviews.com

Amy Lauren's reflective holiday piano arrangements give me exactly what I need on a Saturday morning.  They relax and soothe me after a hard week. Good for late evening or early morning, these impressionistic new arrangements, beginning with Lauren's own composition Ice Dance, are one cool remove from the kitschy commercialism that so often seems to dominate the holiday season. Ms. Lauren composed exactly half of these sixteen wonderful tracks. Fitting into the undescriptive genre classification called new age, her piano arrangements are enhanced by her liberal use of contemplative stylistic flourishes. And even in her use of traditional Christmas melodies, she has chosen from the more serious and sacred side of the songbook. No dashing through the snow here; rather, this is like a night of watching the snow fall outside your window, warm cocoa in hand. At sixteen tracks and sixty minutes, Amy Lauren's soft piano is just the thing to warm hearts and hearth fires this season.