I'll apologize in advance if my words offend anyone, as that's not my intent. I'm merely trying to add my two cents in a substantive way, which may ruffle some feathers...

That said...

To my ears, my favorite arranger performers do seem to come from across the water. For example, I really like what Andrea does...Its not so much technically impressive, but his taste for what he puts out there. Its polished, its arranged well, etc.

From here in the States, my experience in hearing other OMB-ers whether in person or via websites like this has been pretty underwhelming. There's certainly a different grading scale for people who consider themselves professional versus people just playing as a hobby.

Two acts that stand out to me that are State based are Randy Sherwood, who I think puts out an outstanding product, and Donny Pesce. That may surprise some who may remember Donny & I banging heads a few times. All that aside, I really like Donny's approach. He knows what he's good at, he knows how to market himself, he knows how to keep his audiences happy. Is he the best player around here? No. Is he the best vocalist? again, no. But who cares? He's better than most guys out there and when you put it all together in a package as he has, he just crushes most of his competition.

Randy is a highly skilled player who time and time again puts out a very polished product. One very talented man, to be sure.

I obviously won't name anyone who's work I don't care for, but there is some positively dreadful stuff being posted to various websites that I can't for the life of me begin to understand why.

To bring this back full circle, I wonder if our friends in Europe are (for whatever reason) more self critical than most of us are here in the States? Being more self critical could explain why some feel the Euro players are superior to home grown players.

Interesting subject...