Hi Alec/Bill.

I was lucky enough to see Brian play several times and even the professionals on the circuit used to wonder how he did it. And he was known on the Professional circuit as the Organists' organist. When you asked him the question 'How do you do that, Brian?' his answer would be to show you in a slow way so you could watch how it was done and then go on to play at the correct tempo and still wonder.I was also lucky enough for him to play a concert for me at my home and over a 100 visitors came to see him. He had just that day finished a recording on the Yamaha EL90 of the Teddy Bears Picnic in a Trad Jazz Style and I had my own personal performance in the afternoon before the concert. He used a dixie style drum rhythm with no other automatics at all and manually played all the other instruments (clarinet, trumpets. trombones. banjo, whistles, etc.) and result was absolutely spellbinding. He could play five finger chords on the white notes with one hand on bottom manual and overlay it with five finger chords on the black notes on the same manual with his other hand and play a melody on the pedals and to this day I have never been able to work out how he did it and make it sound so good. One of his other talents was to arrange big band music, which he did for some of the B.B.C. bands. If I remember correctly this was mainly for B.B.C. Radio Big Band. He would arrange things in his head whilst on the way to his many performances and then he got there he would sit at the organ console and put it together on manuscipt.

Hope my reminiscences haven't bored you.
regards.
Pete B

[This message has been edited by peter.bentley@talk21.com (edited 04-23-2003).]