Fame? Tesh doesn’t care to talk about it

Women love him for his blond hair, chiseled good looks and 6-foot-6-inch frame. Men hate him for essentially the same reasons.

John Tesh, who appears this weekend with the Omaha Symphony at the Holland Performing Arts Center, shrugs it all off.

The former co-anchor of “Entertainment Tonight” wears his good looks and fame lightly.

In conversation, Tesh, 57, is remarkably unassuming and down to earth. He cares little for celebrity. He’s mostly interested in talking about his music.

We asked him about his decision to give up “Entertainment Tonight,” which had a nightly audience of about 23 million viewers, to be a musician.

Q. Why on earth did you leave one of the biggest gigs on television to become a touring pianist?

A. Yeah, I guess that does seem pretty crazy. But for me it was perfectly natural. I’ve been playing keyboards and trumpet since I was a kid. In high school I played organ in a rock band. I toured in the 1980s with Yanni’s band. And I’ve been writing music, including the “NBA on NBC Theme,” for many years. So it wasn’t like I quit television and suddenly became a musician. I’d been a musician my whole life.

Q. Who are the musicians you most admire?

A. The Beatles were my biggest influence and were the guys who really inspired me to write music. As a keyboard player, I was also really impressed with groups like Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

Q. You wrote the NBA basketball theme by singing it into your telephone answering machine. How do you usually write music?

A. The NBA theme came to me when I was traveling and didn’t have access to a piano or tape recorder. So I called my answering machine at home and left myself a message, singing the theme into the phone so that I wouldn’t forget it. But I usually compose at my grand piano. I also use synthesizers and samplers. In fact, I’ve always been a high-tech music geek and like to use the latest equipment. I was one of the first people to start working on a Synclavier back in the mid-1970s.

Q. You’ve been hosting the “John Tesh Radio Show” since 2003. What’s the origin of the show’s “Intelligence for Your Life” segment?

A. Every time I walked past my wife’s (actress Connie Sellecca) side of the bed, I’d see all these magazines like “Prevention” and “Oprah” stacked up with Post-It notes on them, which referred to stories she wanted to read when she finally found the time. I thought it would be a neat idea to boil down all of those tips-and-advice columns –– which nobody seemed to have to time to read –– and present them on-air as 45-second and one-minute segments.

Q. You have a remarkably varied career. Is there anything you’ve not done that you would like to try?

A. I got a DVD in the mail the other day called the “Best of Victor Borge,” the guy who did the classical piano and comedy routine. I’d like to do something like that one day. It would get me back to my classical roots and force me to learn Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp minor again. That would be hard. But it would also be fun.

Contact the writer:

444-1076, john.pitcher@owh.com

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