[atlantaprog] Re: prog

Respectfully, I think prog musicians are at least as good technically as
jazz and classical ones.  I really don't think how long it's been around
makes anything any better.

Higher standards do, though.

Local critic Russell Shaw (anyone remember him?) used to write for *Down Beat*, the jazz mag. He was doing a review of one of ELP's *Works* albums when he wondered aloud about the attention paid to Keith Emerson as some sort of world-class virtuoso. He begged to differ; I can't remember the exact wording, but he suggested that you could find plenty of equally skilled players all over the music schools of our universities. I tend to think he's fairly correct in that assessment--I might put him a cut or two above the college students.

I'd like to see Emo cut a classical piano CD--not of his own material--so we could compare his chops to those of the *real* world-class classical players. Could Emo do Beethoven the way Alfred Brendel does? Could his Chopin stand up to Artur Rubenstein's or Krystian Zimerman's? What would his interpretation of the *original* version of *Pictures At An Exhibition* be like? (For those who don't know, it was originally written for solo piano; the version most of us know is an orchestration by Maurice Ravel.) Could he play Franz Liszt's *Transcendental Etudes* at all? (My answer: Probably not now, but they're within reach.)

Just a thought! ;-)

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