Best prog rock flautist, besides Ian Anderson.

Thijs Van Leer (Focus)

You just have to listen to this to know the answer:

Ian Mc'Donald (King Crimson) certainly. Not just for his technic, but cause he does a diferent sound of the rest of progressive flute players, whose generaly uses a variation of folk/rock/pseudo-symphonic melody. I should say that flute wasnt made for rock - ok, what ian anderson did was cool -, but the combination of smooth rock and flute its very nice, as we can listen in works like Gotic - Escenes (i dont remember the name of the flutist).

Edited by desistindo - June 09 2010 at 15:02

yeah,its got to be thijs van leer for me too, -the emotion of some of those focus songs -always brings tears to the eyes! i"d also say the guy in asia minor is a personal favourite. i prefer ian anderson"s flute on tull"s proggy albums "thick as a brick" and "a passion play"- amazing!

Tarquin Underspoon wrote: The Runaway wrote: Andy Latimer of Camel, Thijs van Leer of Focus, Didier Malherbe of Gong, they're all fantastic flautists, but really, in my opinion, nobody beats Nigel Pegrum!

You're the first one to actually get what I'm saying!

Valery Tolstov from Oaksenham, an Armenian band

Hermann Josef Bosten of Tortilla Flat

Ray Thomas, Ian Mcdonald, Jimmy Hastings, David Jackson ( the flute on Pawn Hearts is epic)

Dellinger wrote: I like Thijs Van Leer pretty much. Focus was the first rock band (I didn't know about progressive then) which gave so much importance to the flute. Now, I don't really know so much about flute, is Ian Anderson really so very good? Or is he just in the most popular prog band fronted by a flute player? I mean, I really like his playing in Jethro Tull, but wouldn't know if what he's doing is really so amazing or just sounds cool.

     Ian Anderson blows most flute players away with his emotional playing.  His style, he created and it's been talked of in amazement by prog lovers since "Cross eyed Mary" etc. from "Aqualung.  He started the unigue style of playing so emotionally his breath in for more air to play sounds awesome and I've never heard the equal, as in purely emotional playing.  Ian with his band Jethro Tull also produced many folk inspired prog releases like two of my favorites, which include more traditional flute playing and he is still amazing.  Try the albums: Agualung, Song's From The Wood, and 'Heavy Horses."   Also, my favorite, "Thick As A Brick" if you like more straight progressive rock than folk inspired.  I have all of JT's releases except JTull.com.  I wouldn't go past "Songs From The Wood," as the quality of his music, or the style and times, made further releases very disappointing, exept for a few, like Stormwatch.  Still, I don't want to steer you wrong, so I'd get "Aqualung and Heavy Horses," to get the broadest overview of Tull's two major different styles, being straight hard progressive rock and progressive folk rock.  I won't even get into the first two releases, because they are much more blues based, and this was short lived.  Benefit, when Tull started changing to a heavy folk inspired prog band, is one of my fav's too, but I'd start with the 2 I mentioned, if you really want to hear an awesome flute player. 

I like Peter Gabriel's flute-playing a lot... it's very memorable.  Not that he's particularly very technically skilled at the instrument, but he does add a nice atmosphere.