This outstanding series is an encouragement to beginning singers in preparing a vocal solo. Songs have been carefully chosen for each voice type after consulting many official state contest repertoire lists. All the songs, for instance, are on the Texas list. The series will be useful to any novice singer, not just limited to those preparing an actual contest solo. Each volume contains 10 songs: 5 art songs in English, an African-American spiritual, 2 songs in Italian, a song in German and a song in Spanish. There are new editions and engravings of all songs. Biographical information is included on each composer. Interpretive suggestions are given for each song, and the preface on "Learning a Song" is especially instructive. Each companion CD includes beautiful performances of all the songs by a professional singer, and excellent accompaniments by pianist Laura Ward. Also on the CD are pronunciation guides in Italian, German and Spanish.