Sorry, spalding, but tossing out what someone creative did on one of the world's most expensive WORKSTATIONS is hardly proof that there is anyone even SLIGHTLY interested in creativity on an arranger.
Were you to toss out a couple of names like Rudess (who I adore, by the way) and links to their work on an arranger, I would start to take the tiniest notice of what you have to say. But after YEARS of almost the same apologia for arrangers (VST based or otherwise) with not ONE example of anything creative, I'm sorry, but your argument comes over as mere wishful thinking, rather than based on FACT.

Let's put it this way... My arguments posits that there are no really creative people playing arrangers, and I back it up with the complete dearth of creative arranger music available. YOUR argument posits that the ARE creative people using the arranger, and you back it up with...

NOTHING

BTW, the factory demos for Yamaha are sequenced, NOT arranger play. Just as most manufacturers do. And we've ALL seen just how terrible most live arranger demos are, at even getting a normal, gig-ready performance, let alone something that might pass as 'creative'. If you use an arranger as a basic workstation for a sequencing project, does that somehow make the ARRANGER a 'creative' instrument?

Look at what we all look at and listen to on this forum, lately... guitarists! Singers! Basically, players of REAL instruments with a thousand times the expressive potential of an electronic arranger. Why do we go all ga-ga over these? Because they achieve a level of expressiveness impossible on these limited, sample-based keyboards with negligible sample depth or modulation possibilities.

You can pull more depth of expression and tonal possibilities out of a cheap guitar than you can pull from the best arranger in the world. The same note can be played in a myriad of fashions, no two people playing the same guitar ever make it sound the same, let alone play the same parts on it. But an arranger... Who, on earth, can even make it SOUND different?

Here's the bottom line... sure, you COULD use an arranger as a jumping off point for something utterly unique... But why WOULD you, when doing the same thing on a TOTL WS offers SO MUCH MORE possibilities and capabilities? Who chooses a crippled broken tool to create on, when better tools exist (at lower prices, too)?

Until I HEAR all this wellspring of creativity you THINK exists, I'm afraid I'm going to stick to my opinion...