Today is St Patrick's day - a time when if you have a spec of Irish DNA, you'll be at the pub enjoying a pint of Guinness or eight.

For those of us that have don't have that ancestry - I thought I'd post a little bit of Patrick Moraz - okay, he's the only Patrick keyboard player I could come up with and I guess he's not at all Irish - being pretty obviously French.

But he did play with Yes from 1974 to 1976, and for the Moody Blues - he's got a prog rock heritage that would make Jordan Rudess proud.

Since he left the Moody Blues in 92, he's been focussing mostly on piano works - being a fully trained classical pianist from the Conservatory of Lausann. He's is still releasing works and performing with prog stickman Bill Bruford.

In 1995, Moraz embarked on his Coming Home to America tour. He booked everything himself, and for a flat fee of $800 would come to your house, club or other venue, and play private or semi-private solo piano concerts. All of which reminds me of the Brett Domino ebay auction  where he played in some bloke's living room.

This clip from 1996 at the Musicians Institute is fantastically dated, with some excruciating electric piano tones and you get a sense that as an artist, he may be a little 'difficult' to work with, check his passive agressive approach to  calling out the lighting guy over the mic for the lack of smoke.

More Information

• PatrickMoraz.com