Edvard Grieg (15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use and development of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions put the music of Norway in the international spectrum, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius and Antonín Dvořák did in Finland and Bohemia, respectively. The Edvard Grieg Museum in Troldhaugen (Grieg’s former home in Bergen) is dedicated to his legacy. (More from Wikipedia)
On June 6, 1966, Keith Emerson – later a founding member of the Nice and Emerson, Lake and Palmer – told Bruno Ceriotti that he was in the audience for a performance by the Soul Agents at the Marquee Club. As reported by Ceriotti on his blog: “The not yet famous organ God Keith Emerson was in the audience during one of the band’s Marquee shows that summer, and was duly inspired by Don Shinn’s act that featuring hilarious stage antics such as a habit of disappearing around the back of his organ to draw out weird sounds with the aid of a screwdriver, and also ‘treated’ adaptations of classical pieces such as an arrangement of Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, one of the most popular of all piano concerti. Seeing Don Shinn do that, made Keith Emerson realise that he’d like to compile an act from what Don did.”
(May 2014)
