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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Put Your Dress Down and Sing, Darlene Koldenhoven looks back on a life shaped by music and by the expectations surrounding the family that raised her. Born in Chicago after a dangerous delivery, the author remembers singing before she fully understood why the sounds mattered so much to her. Her Dutch Christian Reformed childhood gives the memoir its early frame, with church, school, and family life all influencing a girl who wants to use her voice. Formal training at the Chicago Conservatory turns that gift into a craft. Marriage, illness, teaching, and professional uncertainty all test the direction she thought her life would take. This memoir traces the making of an artist who keeps finding her way back to song.
Darlene Koldenhoven’s Put Your Dress Down and Sing is a wonderful memoir, and she writes with the same musical personality that shapes her career. I love the early school story where Deanne and several choir girls press Mr. Ostrander to hear her sing, then the author answers his skeptical high C by climbing to high E until he lets her into the Glee Club. That moment says everything about how she's not about to let anyone else dictate what she can and cannot do. Much later, as she gets into the pandemic, the author shows the same practical spirit when she uses the lockdown to produce The Grand Piano Spa, then sees it debut at number four on Billboard’s Classical Crossover chart as an independent release. Throughout, the author is authentic, with humor that never feels separate from her pure honesty. Well written and full of life, readers who enjoy artists' memoirs will adore this.
