What would you rather listen to Dinki...a good exciting arranger player or a bunch of mediocre musicians banging away...you see its all to do with how you use your instrument! a point you seem to have over looked!...I add live realism to my arranger playing and make it exciting to the listener by adding dynamics with both hands, the arranger will follow as would a good tight band, I can inprovise over whatever to arranger is doing and bring realism into the performance.

I regularly work with two vocalists and they have chosen to work with an arranger player rather than a full live band because its much cleaner, much more controllable, and we create a great sound, the arranger allows us to cover a wide spectrum of music
and we play every live, no pre recorded tracks...although you are under the impression that a style running over the same chord endlessly (which as you know is what arrangers do if you take your hand away) is a backing track? I'm afraid my two singers will disagree with you there !!! it may be automatic backing but I need to be there to input the chord data in real time using my vast musical knowledge to create the impression that more than one musician is in the band...that my friend is still LIVE music.

Rgds

NJ