On another list I subscribe to, the list of the Association of Recorded Sound Collections, we were touching on the subject of performers known for reasons other than their excellence...Phalen Tassie, Wing, Florence Foster Jenkins, etc. I also have a large collection of recorded classical bloopers... At any rate the name of Richard Nanes came up in discussion. In the past, I always thought of him as a prime example of the power of promotion and publicity. While I have heard rumors that his music has been ghost written by others...since I don't care much for it, I suppose I wouldn't want my own name attached to it, but...to get to my point, he may be one of the last composer pianists. There has been a long tradition of composer pianists in the history of music. One need only to mention Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Medtner, Casella, Bartok, and even some relatively recent Russians like Ovchinnikov (for me a pretty good conservative composer), Khrennikov, et al. But when I think about recent times very few names come to mind. In short, in recent memory, when was the last time there was a major composer who performed his/her own concerto with an orchestra. I think of Leon Kirchner doing his First Concerto with Mitropoulos back in the 1950s, Easley Blackwood (in my mind one of the great composers) doing his Piano Concerto in Cleveland with Louis Lane, but that was at least 30 years ago. Certainly there have been recent Russians like Khrennikov, and Shostakovich, but has that breed died? In short...and I hate to say it, but is Nanes the last in the long line of composer/pianists? Karl