その手前のプレイヤー

00:48 Nov 5, 2023 

Basically, the person speaking is the owner of a famous jazz bar, where only top musicians can perform. When a pianist asks him to evaluate a collaboration, the owner answers very harshly, criticizing both his skills and his behaviour/lack of humility.

Then the owner rethinks his actions and feels he had been way too harsh with the pianist, who had good skills.

At a certain point another pianist gets ill and needs to be replaced. The owner says the topic sentence to his assistent and decides to give a chance to the guy.

The problem is: if we go with your interpretation (physical instead of abstract), why that その? It's up to the owner to take the final decision, and he's the only one who met that pianist to test him.

Thanks!

Thanks!

00:18 Nov 5, 2023 

Those who stand on the stage are first-class, but then are we being fair about the musician who stands before us?

A bit of the context would be very helpful here cause "temae" really means the physical position rather than abstract meaning.

This line actually reminds me of a Japanese Netflix series about a JPOP boy-band - and "ore-tachi" implied they are the producers (as you already said in the post), they are wondering if the player in question is really first-class or just that they are fond of this player in other merit more than being a first-class player. (so that the producer cannot be level-headed when they decided to put the musician in front of them to the stage)

The difference between わかっている and わかる could be helpful to explain できている. "can we be fair" and "can we still be fair". This means that they are already in the knowing/doubt that they favour the musician in question and could not fairly assess whether they are first-class or not.