Terje Mikkelsen first met Keith Emerson in China in 2006, when the acclaimed Norwegian conductor invited the ELP icon to play with the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. They went on to record the Three Fates Project together in 2012. Mikkelsen tells Prog what the late keyboard maestro means to him.
“The first day I met Keith we had a really nice talk, and I was sort of stunned how much he knew about classical music – how much he had listened to and his appreciation of it.
It was really interesting to understand how much of a classical musician’s brain he had, even though he didn’t have classical training, and composition-wise he would write different kinds of music. But he had really studied piano, which, of course, showed in his playing.
We had a long evening together, then I said, ‘Let’s meet for breakfast tomorrow.’ He looked at me quizzically, and eventually he said, ‘I don’t do breakfast!’
The Keith Emerson Band played very differently. They were used to playing with click tracks; they were used to playing on the beat. We spent four days rehearsing so I could show them how in orchestras we change the tempo – we phrase the music. We don’t use headsets, we don’t use click tracks.
We were to do a live performance in Munich. When we got there the orchestra were really impressed with how prepared Keith, Marc Bonilla, [guitar], Travis Davis [bass] and Troy Luccketta] drums were. The orchestra were used to sitting around waiting for a band to sort of find a way. But Keith was 100% professional – totally prepared.
And he was so happy getting this sort of service and respect, because he said that, in the 70s, he’d had bad experiences with symphony orchestras who didn’t really take him seriously.
When I was training, I heard his perfomances of classical music like Sibelius and Tchaikovsky. I even bought my own organ to learn to play. But my teachers would say, ‘He cannot do that – it’s a criminal act – this is destroying classical music!’
But in my career as a composer, I’ve met a lot of orchestra players who say they can thank Keith Emerson for their discovery of classical music. He inspired them, and they ended up being world-class musicians.
I’m happy when I see anyone praising Keith because I think some people see him as just someone who could play faster and crazier than everyone else. For me, he was a really great musician – a serious interpreter of classical music who wanted to share his knowledge, impress and inspire people.”
