John Tesh: Live at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony
It was 2:00 p.m. on dress rehearsal day for John Tesh: Live at Red Rocks with the Colorado Symphony, and from my position at the piano—which is wrapped in a silver space blanket to reflect the sun’s rays and protect it from the drop in temperature that will occur between now and the dress rehearsal, which could throw the piano out of tune—my view of the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre was framed by giant rocks that looked as if they had exploded from the earth. “Creation Rock” on the north end, “Ship Rock” on the south, and “Stage Rock” to the east reminded me of family trips I’d made to Utah’s Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon. Like those places, Red Rocks inspires feelings of awe.
The walls of the amphitheater contain records dating back to the Jurassic period 160 million years ago. There are dinosaur tracks on the property as well as fossil fragments of the forty-foot sea serpent plesiosaur. Impossibly, these natural formations looked even more majestic in the midafternoon sun than they did when I was in this exact spot several months earlier during the site survey. We would film the PBS concert special the next day with a five-piece core band (drums, percussion, bass, guitar, electric violin) and the Colorado Symphony.
During the site survey I’d walked into the venue with my old friend David Michaels to find a beautiful nine-foot Steinway piano in the middle of the giant stage. In a wonderful gesture of encouragement and inspiration, the amphitheater management had rented it for the day so that I could experience the legendary Red Rocks acoustics as our production team went about their work: picking camera and lighting positions, plotting sight lines and crane positions, and planning for the huge logistics challenge ahead of them. Our crew would need two full days just to load in all the equipment.
I sat at the Steinway, playing for an empty amphitheater and listening as each note was first amplified by the giant rock wall behind me, and then projected forward and propelled toward the rear of the amphitheater. There was no slap-back echo on a back wall that would normally be present in a conventional concert hall. From the stage, the sound of the Steinway piano strings entered a massive rock funnel created by the monolithic formations on each side. In that canyon between the rocks, the music gathered three seconds of natural reverberation and then vanished at the rear of the amphitheater. No sound system. No amplification. I imagined the powerful sound that the symphony would make in this supernatural place. As the sun set on Stage Rock behind me that day and we wrapped up the site survey, I felt the presence of my favorite artists in this ancient amphitheater. Jimmy Hendrix, 1968. Jethro Tull, 1971. U2, 1983. The Moody Blues, 1992. The Beatles, 1964. Each of these artists was, in their own way, responsible for why I felt like Red Rocks was the only place I could make a big enough musical and visual statement that I might finally come into my own as a professional musician.
Later that night, David and I returned to the venue to see what it would look like during a live concert. ZZ Top was performing. Their unmistakable Texas blues–driven guitar sound ripped through the Colorado night air like lightning. This was only to be surpassed, midway through the show, by actual lightning that descended on the venue with an earthshaking crack and a fireball bolt of static electricity that struck the left speaker tower suspended from the metal scaffolding. The band, seemingly oblivious to the event, continued to play on, even as smoke poured from the speaker tower and with only the right speaker array still in service. The crowd roared with delight.
The only thing that could match the impossibility and unbelievability of that moment is the one I’m experiencing right now, on day two of our rehearsals before the actual event. I’m realizing I’m going to be playing my music on the same stage as my favorite band, the Beatles, the band I had watched on television as a twelve-year-old boy.
It feels like a dream come true. But not just any dream. A specific dream brought forward from my childhood years—much of it spent alone creating things in my head—that has been so vivid and so graphic for so long, it has never not appeared to me in living color when I think about it.
I look halfway up the audience seating area to where there is a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot carpeted platform with a pommel horse and a balance beam bolted to it. Gymnastics apparatus. Two cameras on cranes are tracking the movements of Olympic champions Nadia Comăneci and Bart Conner as they rehearse separate routines that have been choreographed to three of my songs. Oblivious to the production crew that surrounds them, Nadia and Bart are deep in a creative process using jargon only they can understand.
Nadia is on the beam. Bart is calling out choreography ideas in a series of eight-counts, barely heard above the recorded playback of my “April Song” from a boombox at the base of the platform. Next, Bart takes his turn on the pommel horse. With Nadia now looking on, Bart’s legs are whipping back and forth across the pommel horse in world championship form. His hands, at full speed, are indistinguishable from one another as he reaches between his legs in movements that are synchronous with “Group 5,” a frenetic composition of mine with three different time signatures. The song was originally created as the underscore for the death-defying downhill segments of the Tour de France. It’s a rush of nostalgia for me. I had worked as a sports commentator with both Bart and Nadia, of course, and before that watched them grow up together on the world stage and become Olympic champions. Now they are a couple who just recently become engaged to be married.
I go backstage to my dressing room, which is framed by walls of rock. There are even rock benches. I should be nervous. I should be a mess. But the hundreds of hours of rehearsal, the overwhelming amount of details swimming in my head, and the fact that my wife and baby girl will be in the audience tonight have created an odd calmness in me.
I close my eyes, meditating on the truth that I have memorized every note, every phrase that each orchestra member is about to play. I can tell you the width of the piatti cymbal and the hourly rental cost of the Sony PCM-3324 digital recording machine. I know the distance of Nadia’s balance beam to the keys of my grand piano, and I can tell you the weather report at this exact moment. It is not good.
I open my eyes.
My dearest wife, Concetta, is standing in front of me with an oxygen mask on her face, fighting off the effects of altitude sickness. Red Rocks resides at nearly seven thousand feet. Our brand-new daughter is in her arms.
“Okay, John. It’s time to pray, and it’s time to go out there and focus on one thing. Just play piano, my love,” she says.
She’s right. The weather. The audience. The orchestra. The risk. Her altitude sickness. They are all in God’s hands now.
Walkie-talkies continue their distorted crackling, and the stage manager walks over and hands me his unit. It’s Michaels. There will be only one final conversation before downbeat. When conductor John Bisharat lowers his baton, David and I will be in this together without further communication, connected only by the drama that is unfolding on my stage and in his TV truck. We have been all over the world together creating the sports version of this kind of television, but we have never been “here” before.
Decades later, when I read that Mel Gibson spoke encouragement over himself during challenging shots for his film The Passion of the Christ, I related to his combination of bravado and loneliness. Gibson’s recurring mantra on location was simply: “I can do this. I know how to do this.” When you’ve jumped off a cliff hoping to fly, you must believe that God will help you build your plane—or your wings—on the way down.
I know in my heart I can do this. I just need to focus on the one thing I can control, which my wife has reminded me: “Just play piano.”
I hear the unmistakable sound of seventy world-class musicians tuning to a concert C. Then I find myself pulled into a circle of band members, standing hand in hand. They have joined me on a six-month journey of rehearsals and live concert performances, preparing for this very moment. Violinist Charlie Bisharat. Bassist Tim Landers. Drummer Dave Hooper. Percussionist Brian Kilgore. Guitarist Paul Viapiano. We hold hands and say prayers of thanks. Then I repeat the words of Martin Luther King Jr., which my bandmates have heard many times before: “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step in faith.”
One song at a time.
As we approach the stage, I remind Tim and Dave not to “go with me” if I push the tempo. I knew that the tension of the moment, further exacerbated by the altitude at Red Rocks, would increase our heartbeats significantly, and when performing an instrument, it’s human nature for the clock in your brain to be driven by the beat of your heart. So, for example, if a song is designed to be played at 80 beats per minute, but my rapidly beating heart tells me that’s slow, I might push the tempo. My resting heart rate at sea level is 48 bpm. It was now 90. The orchestrations created by John Bisharat were complex enough that even a 5-beats-per-minute push could create a train wreck of mistakes. Though it’s common for the engine room—the drums and bass—to follow the tempo of the featured artist (me on piano) for continuity, it is crucial that Tim and Dave hold the line on tempo and force me to stay with them. Thankfully, Dave has created a metronome click track that will play in his earpiece to ensure we start each song at the right tempo. All I need is a few raised eyebrows from Tim, and I’ll know I am playing on top of the beat and should back off. This is one concert where I cannot trust my instincts. I am performing in a unique paradigm.
As I step onto the stage, it’s all I can do to hold back a flood of tears. I am not ready for the roar of nine thousand people and the burst of five hundred high-intensity Vari-Lites in my face, heralding the beginning of the concert. The crowd is already on their feet. A cameraman, dressed in all black, is on his knees, inches from my left hand. Out of the corner of my eye I see a giant camera crane swoop down, inches above the crowd and speeding toward the stage. I realize that I’ve been holding my breath and exhale with a long sigh (which is audible on the recording later). I smile, quickly scanning for the readiness of each band member. One final nod from maestro John Bisharat. Then he raises his arms high over his head. The musicians lift their instruments . . . and . . . downbeat!
The stage shakes beneath me with a synchronized eruption of tympani, orchestral bass drum, and piatti cymbals. The fifty-foot-tall pillars on either side of the stage explode on cue with fiery pyrotechnics. The crowd erupts and I have to strain to hear Hooper’s hi-hat to dig out the tempo. Now, with the strings and brass all playing triple-forte unison lines, the fanfare for “A Thousand Summers” unfolds. This is one of the biggest songs on the set list, with no less than five different time signatures and four separate themes. I originally composed the piece to describe the vast scope and pageantry of the Tour de France. It’s our opening theme, and along with maestro Bisharat’s wonderfully bombastic orchestrations, it sends the message to the Red Rocks audience that they are witnessing an epic event. I’m drunk with emotion and in the heat of the moment, I again hear Connie’s encouragement in my head: Just play piano!
In another twenty minutes, though, I would need more than encouragement to overcome an unexpected obstacle.