Кит Эмерсон: Жизнь и творчество легендарного клавишника

English keyboardist, songwriter, and composer (1944–2016)

Keith Noel Emerson (2 November 194411 March 2016) was an English keyboardist, songwriter, composer and record producer. He played keyboards in a number of bands before finding his first commercial success with the Nice in the late 1960s. He became internationally famous for his work with the Nice, which included writing rock arrangements of classical music. After leaving the Nice in 1970, he was a founding member of Emerson, Lake & Palmer (ELP), one of the early progressive rock supergroups. Emerson, Lake & Palmer were commercially successful through much of the 1970s, becoming one of the best known progressive rock groups of the era. Following ELP's break up at the end of the 1970s, Emerson pursued a solo career, composed several film soundtracks, and formed the bands Emerson, Lake & Powell In the early 1990s, ELP reunited for two more albums and several tours before breaking up again in the late 1990s. Emerson also reunited The Nice in 2002 and 2003 for a tour. During the 2000s, Emerson resumed his solo career, including touring with his own Keith Emerson Band featuring guitarist Dave Kilminster, then replaced by Marc Bonilla, and collaborating with several orchestras. He reunited with ELP bandmate Greg Lake in 2010 for a duo tour, culminating in a one off ELP reunion show in London to celebrate the band's 40th anniversary. Emerson's last album, The Three Fates Project, with Marc Bonilla and Terje Mikkelsen, was released in 2012. Emerson was widely regarded as one of the top keyboard players of the progressive rock era. AllMusic describes Emerson as "perhaps the greatest, most technically accomplished keyboardist in rock history". In 2019, readers of Prog voted him the greatest keyboard player in progressive rock.

Emerson was born on 2 November 1944 in Todmorden, West Riding of Yorkshire. The family had been evacuated from southern England during World War II, after which they returned south and settled in Goring by Sea, West Sussex. Emerson attended West Tarring School (now Worthing High School) in Tarring. His mother Dorothy was not musical, but his father Noel was an amateur pianist and taught Emerson basic piano. When Emerson was eight, his parents arranged formal tuition, learning to play and read music with "local little old ladies" until he was around thirteen, with whom he studied to ABRSM Grade 7. Emerson's teacher put him in competitions at the Worthing Music Festival and suggested he finish studying music in London, but Emerson had little interest in classical music at the time and chose jazz piano. He had saved money to buy a Bird electric organ with built in speakers on each side, but then spotted a Hammond in the shop and thought it was a better purchase. where Emerson played the organ back to front. To increase the visual interest of his show, Emerson abused his Hammond L 100 organ by, among other things, hitting it, beating it with a whip, pushing it over, riding it across the stage like a horse, playing with it lying on top of him, and wedging knives into the keyboard. Some of these actions also produced musical sound effects: hitting the organ caused it to make explosion like sounds, turning it over made it feed back, and the knives held down keys, thus sustaining notes. Emerson's show with The Nice has been cited as having a strong influence on heavy metal musicians. Emerson first heard a Moog synthesizer when a record shop owner played him Switched On Bach (1968) by Wendy Carlos, and thought the instrument looked like "an electronic skiffle". which had been tested out on a field near Heathrow Airport.

ELP's record deal provided funds for Emerson to buy his own Moog modular synthesiser from the US, which was a preset model that had fewer leads and punch cards to call up certain patches. His use of the Moog was so critical to the development of new Moog models that he was given prototypes, such as the Constellation, which he took on one tour, As synthesiser technology evolved, Emerson went on to use a variety of other synthesisers, including the Minimoog, Yamaha GX 1, and several models by Korg.

Emerson performed several notable rock arrangements of classical compositions, ranging from J. S. Bach and Modest Mussorgsky to 20th century composers such as Béla Bartók, Aaron Copland, Leoš Janáček and Alberto Ginastera. Occasionally Emerson quoted from classical and jazz works without giving credit, particularly early in his career. An early example of Emerson's arranging was the song "Rondo" by The Nice, which is a 4/4 interpretation of Dave Brubeck's 9/8 composition "Blue Rondo à la Turk". During live performances the piece is introduced by an extensive excerpt from the 3rd movement of Bach's Italian Concerto. On ELP's eponymous first album, Emerson's classical quotes went largely uncredited. In the 1973 reissue on the group's personal label, Manticore Records, the songs are credited correctly. By 1971, with the releases Pictures at an Exhibition and Trilogy, ELP began to fully credit classical composers, including Modest Mussorgsky for the piano piece which inspired the Pictures album, and Aaron Copland for "Hoedown" on the Trilogy album. Emerson indicated in an interview that he based his version of Pictures at an Exhibition on Mussorgsky's original piano composition, rather than on Maurice Ravel's later orchestration of the work. Following ELP's 1974 tour, the members agreed to put the band on temporary hiatus and pursue individual solo projects. During this time, Emerson composed his "Piano Concerto No. 1" and recorded it with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. According to Emerson, he was motivated by critical comments suggesting that he relied upon adapting classical works because he was unable to write his own music, and further motivated by the London Philharmonic "who weren't that helpful to begin with" and "had the attitude of 'What's a rock musician doing writing a piano concerto?'" In 1976, while still in ELP, Emerson also released his first solo record, the single "Honky Tonk Train Blues" b/w "Barrelhouse Shake Down". "Honky Tonk Train Blues", Emerson's cover of a 1927 boogie woogie piano song by Meade Lux Lewis, reached on the UK Singles Chart.

In addition to his technical skills at playing and composing, Emerson was a theatrical performer. He cited guitarist Jimi Hendrix and organist Don Shinn as his chief theatrical influences. While in ELP, Emerson continued to some degree the physical abuse of his Hammond organ that he had developed with The Nice, including playing the organ upside down while having it lie over him and using knives to wedge down specific keys and sustain notes during solos. He also engaged in knife throwing using a target fastened in front of his Leslie speakers. He was given his trademark knife, an authentic Nazi dagger, by Lemmy Kilmister, who was a roadie for The Nice in his earlier days. Emerson toned down his theatrics with the organ when ELP used more stage props for their shows. While touring Brain Salad Surgery from 1973 to 1974, at the end of the show, a sequencer in Emerson's Moog Modular synthesiser was set running at an increasing rate, with the synthesiser pivoting to face the audience while emitting smoke and deploying a large pair of silver bat wings from its back. The same tour featured one of Emerson's memorable live show stunts with ELP, which involved playing a piano suspended as high as 20 feet in mid air and then rotated end over end with Emerson sitting at it. This was purely for visual effect, as the piano was fake and had no works inside, leaving Emerson to mime playing. Emerson was introduced to Bob McCarthy, former circus employee on Long Island, New York who demonstrated the stunt piano for him at his home. It was used for shows at Madison Square Garden in December 1973 and the California Jam in April 1974, which was filmed. Emerson said: "After that every TV show I did came the question  Keith, how do you spin around on that piano? I'd say what about my music? The stunt caused Emerson to suffer multiple finger injuries and a broken nose.

In 1981, Emerson released his debut solo album, Honky. Recorded in the Bahamas with local musicians, it departed from Emerson's usual style in featuring calypso and reggae songs, and was generally not well received, except in Italy where it was a hit.

In the 1980s, Emerson began to write and perform music for films, as his orchestral and classical style was more suited for film work than for the new wave dominated pop/ rock market. He was also the composer for the short lived 1994 US animated television series Iron Man.

Starting in the mid 1980s, Emerson formed several short lived supergroups. The first two, Emerson, Lake & Powell (with Lake and ex Rainbow drummer Cozy Powell) and 3 (with Palmer and American multi instrumentalist Robert Berry), were intended to carry on in the general style of ELP in the absence of one of the original members. Emerson, Lake & Powell had some success, By contrast, 3's only album sold poorly). Emerson also toured briefly in 1990 with The Best, a supergroup including John Entwistle of The Who, Joe Walsh of the Eagles, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter of Steely Dan and The Doobie Brothers, and Simon Phillips. This project focused on covering songs from each of the members' past bands. In the early 1990s, Emerson formed the short lived group Aliens of Extraordinary Ability with Stuart Smith, Richie Onori, Marvin Sperling and Robbie Wyckoff. The group's name came from the application process for a US work visa, and the members included several British musicians who, like Emerson, had come to Los Angeles to further their careers. The group turned down a record deal with Samsung because of Emerson's commitment to an ELP reunion and Smith's involvement with a possible reformation of The Sweet.

In 1991, ELP reformed for two more albums (Black Moon (1992) and In the Hot Seat (1994)) and world tours in 1992–1993. After the 1993 tour, Emerson was forced to take a year off from playing due to a nerve condition affecting his right hand (see Health issues). Following his recovery, ELP resumed touring in 1996, including a successful US tour with Jethro Tull, but broke up again in August 1998. During the spring of 2010, he toured with Greg Lake in the United States and Canada, doing a series of "Intimate Evening" duo shows in which they performed newly arranged versions of the music of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Nice, and King Crimson as well as Emerson's new original composition. On 25 July 2010, a one off Emerson, Lake & Palmer reunion concert closed the High Voltage Festival as the main act in Victoria Park, East London, to commemorate the band's 40th anniversary.

Emerson continued his solo and soundtrack work into the 2000s. His solo releases included the all piano album Emerson Plays Emerson (2002),

Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu worked with Emerson to create an arrangement of ELP's song "Tarkus", which premiered on 14 March 2010, performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Yoshimatsu's arrangement has been featured in multiple live performances and two live recordings. In September 2011, Emerson began working with Norwegian conductor Terje Mikkelsen, along with the Keith Emerson Band featuring Marc Bonilla and the Munich Radio Orchestra, on new orchestral renditions of ELP classics and their new compositions. The project "The Three Fates" was premiered in Norway in early September 2012, supervised by Norwegian professor and musician Bjørn Ole Rasch for the Norwegian Simax label. The work received its UK live premiere on 10 July 2015 at London's Barbican Centre, with the BBC Concert Orchestra, as part of the celebration of the life and work of Robert Moog. Emerson made his conducting debut with Orchestra Kentucky of Bowling Green, Kentucky in September 2013. In October 2014, Emerson conducted the South Shore Symphony at his 70th birthday tribute concert at Molloy College in Rockville Centre, New York. The concert also featured the premiere of his Three String Quartets, and a performance of Emerson's "Piano Concerto No. 1" by Jeffrey Biegel.

In 2000, Emerson was a featured panelist and performer at "The Keyboard Meets Modern Technology", an event honouring Moog presented by the Smithsonian in Washington, D. C., in conjunction with a gallery exhibition celebrating the 300th anniversary of the piano. Emerson later headlined both the first and third Moogfest, a festival held in honour of Robert Moog, at the B. B. King Blues Club & Grill at Times Square in New York City, in 2004 and 2006 respectively. Emerson opened the Led Zeppelin reunion/Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at the O2 Arena in London on 10 December 2007, along with Chris Squire and Alan White (Yes) and Simon Kirke (Bad Company/Free). The supergroup played a new arrangement of "Fanfare for the Common Man". Emerson also made a guest appearance in 2009 on Spinal Tap's album Back from the Dead, and played on several songs at Spinal Tap's "One Night Only World Tour" at Wembley Arena on 30 June 2009. In 2004 Emerson published his autobiography entitled Pictures of an Exhibitionist, which dealt with his life up to his nearly career ending nerve graft surgery in 1993. In 2007, Emerson began working with Canadian independent filmmaker Jason Woodford to make a documentary film based on his autobiography. As of March 2016, production was still ongoing and the filmmakers were seeking funding to finish the film, according to the webpage of an artists' management company representing Emerson.

Around the Christmas of 1969, Emerson married his Danish girlfriend Elinor Lund. They had two sons, Aaron and Damon, before they divorced in 1994. Emerson said it was his fault, as he had "fallen in love with someone else." Emerson then had a long term relationship with Mari Kawaguchi. In April 1975, Emerson's Sussex house burned down and he relocated to London. Emerson enjoyed flying as a hobby, and he obtained his pilot's licence in 1972. When Emerson moved to Santa Monica, California in the mid 1990s, John Lydon, who had openly and harshly criticised ELP during the 1970s when Lydon was a member of the punk band Sex Pistols, was Emerson's neighbour. It marked a low period for Emerson, who was going through a divorce and having financial difficulties. He turned to alcohol, before a course of psychotherapy led to his move to Santa Monica. During his time off, he ran marathons, customised a Harley Davidson motorcycle, and wrote film scores and his autobiography, Pictures of an Exhibitionist, which opens and closes with an account of his illness and subsequent arm operation. In September 2010, Emerson underwent immediate surgery after a routine colonoscopy had revealed a "rather dangerous" polyp in his lower colon.

Emerson died on 11 March 2016 in Santa Monica, California, of a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Following a post mortem, the medical examiner ruled Emerson's death a suicide, and concluded that he had also had heart disease and depression associated with alcohol. According to Emerson's girlfriend Mari Kawaguchi, Emerson had become "depressed, nervous, and anxious" because nerve damage had hampered his playing, and he was worried that he would perform poorly at upcoming concerts in Japan and disappoint his fans. Emerson was buried on 1 April 2016 at Lancing and Sompting Cemetery, Lancing, West Sussex. Although his death had been reported by news sources and an official Emerson, Lake and Palmer social media page as having occurred on the night of 10 March, Lake said, "As sad and tragic as Keith's death is, I would not want this to be the lasting memory people take away with them. What I will always remember about Keith Emerson was his remarkable talent as a musician and composer and his gift and passion to entertain. Music was his life and despite some of the difficulties he encountered I am sure that the music he created will live on forever." Lake died later that same year. A tribute concert featuring Brian Auger, Jordan Rudess, Eddie Jobson, Aaron Emerson, Steve Lukather, Steve Porcaro, Marc Bonilla, and Rachel Flowers took place at the El Rey Theatre. Proceeds from sales of the DVD go to the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation.

Emerson sometimes reached into the interior of his piano and hit, plucked, or strummed the strings with his hand. He said that as a keyboard player, he hated the idea of being "static" and that to avoid it, he "wanted to get inside the piano, brush the strings, stick Ping Pong balls inside". "Take a Pebble" included Emerson strumming the strings of his piano, a technique pioneered by avant garde composer Henry Cowell, referred to as string piano. In the Nice's 1968 live performance of "Hang on to a Dream" on the German television program Beat Club (later released on DVD in 1997), Emerson can be seen and heard reaching inside his grand piano at one point and plucking its strings. In addition to such experimentation, Emerson also incorporated unique musical stylization into his work. Emerson is recognized for having integrated different sounds into his writing, utilizing methods of both horizontal and vertical contrast. Horizontal contrast is the use of distinct styles in a piece of music, combined by alternating between two different segments (in Emerson's case, most frequently alternating classical and non classical); this technique can be seen in numerous works, such as "Rondo", "Tantalising Maggie", "The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack" and others. Vertical contrast is the combination of multiple styles simultaneously; Emerson frequently played a given style with one hand and a contrasting one with the other. This structure can be seen in works such as "Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite", "Rondo", and others. Emerson's love of modern music such as Copland and Bartok was evident in his open voicings and use of fifths and fourths, "Fanfare" emulated guitar power chords. He also used dissonance, atonality, sonata and fugue forms, exposing rock and roll audiences to myriad classical styles from Bach to Stravinsky.

Emerson used a variety of electronic keyboard instruments during his career, including several Hammond organs and synthesisers by Moog Music, Yamaha, and Korg. From time to time he also used other instruments such as pipe organs, a grand piano, a clavinet, and very briefly, a Mellotron. During his ELP years, Emerson toured with a large amount of gear, taking thirteen keyboard units to a December 1973 show at Madison Square Garden, and later travelling with a large Yamaha GX 1 that required eight roadies to move it.

Initially a piano player, Emerson obtained his first Hammond organ, an L 100, after hearing jazz organist Jack McDuff and becoming frustrated with broken hammers inside pianos. Emerson preferred the sound of the C 3 as being "far superior" to the cheaper L 100, and used the L100 to "throw around and make it feed back". Emerson got the L 100 to feed back by placing it close to the onstage speakers and using a fuzzbox. Throughout his career, Emerson owned a number of L 100 models in various states of repair to support his act. These organs were also specially reinforced and modified to enhance their sound and help prevent damage while on tour, and were reported to weigh 300 to 350 pounds. By contrast, his C 3 organ was not used for stunts and Emerson continued to play his original C 3 for many years, using it on all the ELP albums and tours throughout the 1970s. The stunt caused a storm of objections in the US and The Nice received a lifetime ban from the venue. With ELP, Emerson used the Royal Festival Hall organ for the "Clotho" segment of "The Three Fates" on the 1970 eponymous debut album by ELP. He played this organ again in 2002 to open The Nice reunion tour show, but according to a reviewer, the organ failed to operate at the expected volume. Emerson was recorded playing the organ at St. Mark's Church in London for "The Only Way (Hymn)" on the 1971 ELP album Tarkus.

After founder Robert Moog left Moog Music in the late 1970s, Emerson began to consider using synthesisers made by other companies. It can be seen in ELP's Works Orchestral Tour video Emerson later bought a second GX 1 from John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, and used parts from it to repair his original GX 1, which was damaged by a tractor crashing into Emerson's home studio. Emerson sold much of his keyboard equipment in the 1990s when he relocated from England to Santa Monica, California.

In the late 1970s, Emerson also began to use the Korg PS 3300 and PS 3100, which at the time were among the world's first fully polyphonic synthesizers. These Korgs appeared on the ELP album Love Beach, and Emerson continued to use them into the 1980s for his solo album Honky and his soundtrack work. He also became an official endorser for the PS 3300 and PS 3100 in the early 1980s. By the late 2000s, Emerson was employing "a host of Korg gear" including the Korg OASYS and Korg Triton Extreme music workstation synthesisers. A review of the DVD release of ELP's 2010 one off reunion show said that the Korg OASYS "appear[ed] to be Emerson's go to instrument", although he also used a Hammond C 3 and a Moog with a ribbon controller onstage.

In December 1980 Contemporary Keyboard magazine announced, in their Fifth Annual Readers' Poll, that Emerson had—for the fifth time in a row—captured first place in two categories '"Overall Best Keyboardist" and "Best Multi Keyboardist". The five time wins put Emerson in their "Gallery Of The Greats" for both categories. The same poll also saw Emerson take "Best Rock Organist" for the fourth time and "Best Lead Synthesist". In March 2010 Emerson received the annual Frankfurt Music Prize for his achievements, awarded in Frankfurt on the eve of the annual Musikmesse fair. In September 2013 Orchestra Kentucky of Bowling Green gave Emerson their Lifetime Achievement Award in the Arts and Humanities "for his role in bringing classical music to the masses". In 2014 Emerson was inducted into the Hammond Hall of Fame by the Hammond Organ Company.

Emerson occasionally covered or sampled other musical works in his compositions. Permission to use pieces was sometimes denied by the composer or his family; for example Gustav Holst's daughter refused to grant official permission for rock bands to perform her late father's composition Mars, the Bringer of War. However, a number of composers did grant permission for their works to be used. Aaron Copland said that there was "something that attracted [him]" about ELP's version of "Fanfare for the Common Man", and so approved its use, although he said, "What they do in the middle (i. e., the modal section between repeats of Copland's theme), I'm not sure exactly how they connect that with my music". Alberto Ginastera, on the other hand, enthusiastically approved Emerson's electronic realisation of the fourth movement of his first piano concerto, which appeared on their album Brain Salad Surgery under the title "Toccata". Ginastera said, "You have captured the essence of my music, and no one's ever done that before."

"America, 2nd Amendment", from West Side Story "America", by Leonard Bernstein, credited, quoting Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9, From the New World, uncredited. "Rondo", derived from Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo à la Turk", uncredited, quoting Bach, Italian Concerto third movement, uncredited. and fragments of the theme from The Magnificent Seven, by Elmer Bernstein, uncredited. "Knife Edge", based on the Sinfonietta by Leoš Janáček, uncredited on US release (credited on the British Manticore re pressing of the original LP); middle section based on the Allemande from French Suites No. 1 in D minor, by J. S. Bach, uncredited. "Are You Ready Eddy? ", based on the tune of Bobby Troup's song "The Girl Can't Help It" and including a quote from the Assembly bugle call, both uncredited (on Tarkus). Pictures at an Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky, credited. "Nut Rocker", adapted by Kim Fowley, credited, from Tchaikovsky's "March of the Wooden Soldiers", uncredited. "Abaddon's Bolero", quoting "The Girl I Left Behind", traditional. "Jerusalem", by C. Hubert H. Parry, credited. "Maple Leaf Rag", by Scott Joplin (in Works Volume 2), credited. "Fanfare for the Common Man", by Aaron Copland, credited. With Emerson, Lake & Powell, the main theme to "Touch & Go" is identical to the English folk song "Lovely Joan", better known as the counterpoint tune in Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Greensleeves. Not credited. With Emerson, Lake & Powell, "Mars" is based on the equivalent movement from the suite The Planets, by Gustav Holst. Credited. "Romeo & Juliet" from the Romeo and Juliet suite by Sergei Prokofiev, credited.

Besides his Piano Concerto, there are several examples of Emerson creativity in original composition. Since the late Sixties he wrote a wide typology of pieces in different musical styles ranging from pop rock songs such as Flower King of Flies, The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack, Happy Freuds to complex pieces including transversal influences from baroque to contemporary and jazz, anticipating the progressive genre (For Example, Five Bridges Suite). During the seventies alongside arrangements of classic tracks and Lake's ballads, a decisive element of EL&P's albums are the compositions featuring music entirely written by Emerson. His trademark is a very varied range of musical approach: songs with a hard rock impact with a jazz flavour such as Bitches Crystal, A Time and a Place, Living Sin, examples of country or stride piano such as Jeremy Bender or Benny the Bouncer, and adventurous instrumentals difficult to classify in one genre, such as The Three Fates, Tank, Abaddon's Bolero. The more structured and complex epic tracks such as Tarkus, Trilogy, The Endless Enigma, Karn Evil 9, Pirates, Memoirs of an Officer and a Gentleman are all Emerson’s compositions. As a soloist, after his Piano Concerto a period of compositions recorded with the orchestra opened during the early Eighties (Inferno, Nighthawks, Orchestral Suite to Best Revenge). In the following decades Emerson composed many pieces for piano, such as The Dreamer, And Then January, Outgoing Tide, Broken Bough, Soulscapes, displaying an intimate and crepuscular inspiration, also reiterated in orchestral pieces such as Glorietta Pass and After All of This. Funky and dance rhythms can be found in several songs present in the Murderock and Nighthawks soundtracks, whereas in some tracks of Godzilla Final Wars the sound are those of the 2000s. A return to the visionary and tumultuous style of progressive music is represented by the album recorded under the name of the Keith Emerson Band, which includes the long suite The House Of Ocean Born Mary co written with Marc Bonilla. See the section below for a list of songs composed or co composed by Emerson.

On the UK surreal television comedy series Big Train, Kevin Eldon portrayed Emerson as a Roman slave fighting his enemies with progressive rock. The long running comic strip character Keef da Blade in the Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, student newspaper Lachesis (1970s) is based largely on Emerson, the character's name being presumably a reference to his trademark stage antics with knives.