Best musicians I've seen - 2 post script

It seems a long time since I wrote about music: 26 October 2017 and Keith Emerson, actually. While gearing up to write the next in my series, and while I'm still struggling to upload my own mp4 snippets, here are some links to examples of the best keyboards player I've ever seen playing live, playing live. His weapon of choice was the Hammond organ or Moog synthesiser but some of his best stuff  was on the grand piano. A quick listen to the first 20 seconds or so of  this 12 minute long live version of Hang On To A Dream from The Nice's album Elegy (so called because it was released after they split) will tell you a lot about Emerson's ability and fluency:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSn28o6wm2c

But why not listen to the full 12 minutes as  the long extemporised middle section has Emerson taking a swing through boogie woogie and other piano styles, including pratting about inside the lid of his grand piano scraping a microphone across the strings. Which is much better than I make it sound and well worth you checking out.

There is of course loads of other stuff on youtube.  Emerson playing a piano duet with jazz legend Oscar Peterson (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvQIobg0BwU) caught my eye (and ear).

The group and orchestra version of Sibelius's Karelia Suite that I mentioned (16 October 2017 post) is also on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvuoWhTJbPA.

And both the studio version of Emerson's 3 piece band playing their remarkable take on Tchaikovsky's Symphony no 6 (Pathetique) 3rd movement and a live recording of the same piece with band and orchestra are at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLD-45mtCWk (for some reason this starts with 20 seconds of silence) and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIoPd95fCQA
But, if you aren't familiar with the classical piece, it's the comparison of a standard orchestral performance of the piece with the 3 piece rock band that is astounding. For example, Karajan conducting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bviS_Wt3L6M. Paraphrasing what I said before, how Emerson produces something that sounds remarkably redolent of the range of simultaneous melodies of a full orchestra on just his keyboard backed by bass and drums is a wondrous feat. If I knew how to mix them for you I would....

Time to decide on my next musician.