John Tesh wants to create an experience

The U.S. pianist and composer is playing Centennial Hall tomorrow night.

It's John Tesh the pianist, composer and Peter Gabriel fan who is at Centennial Hall tomorrow night. "I've tried everything," says Tesh, who has a hit syndicated radio show, gold records, Emmys and PBS-TV specials in his resume. The U.S. entertainer plays Centennial Hall tomorrow at 7 p.m. The concert benefits the Autism Canada Foundation and Tesh's performance is part of a tour helping support his new album/DVD A Passionate Life (Warner).

"I really want to create an experience. That's why I love Peter Gabriel . . . and Cirque du Soleil," Tesh says from his California home.

Guest performers on the bill include London Mayor Anne Marie DeCicco-Best and husband Tim Best, who may sing a June Carter-Johnny Cash duet. They were originally going to be part of a charity event to support Autism Canada at the invitation of its president, Dave Patchell-Evans of London. After the London duo accepted, that event became tied to the Tesh concert. Others on the bill include the London-based Canadian Celtic Choir, London singer Jim Chapman and London harpist Jennifer White.

Even with these and other London guests performing in the first half of the concert, Tesh may not have the elaborate stagecraft of Gabriel, the British rocker and activist, or the Montreal-based Cirque.

But he says he shares with them a belief a performance can be a transforming spectacle. Tesh encourages fans to reflect and make decisions about their own lives based on what they hear and feel at a Tesh concert. A response like "I'm not doing what God made me for" is fully appropriate, he says. "When you get that right, everything falls into place."

Perhaps surprisingly to some of their other fans, Tesh covers music by British rockers Sting and Phil Collins on A Passionate Life. "Sting's into music. It's a musician's concert . . . when you see Peter Gabriel, he's crazy," says the only British classic rock fan from North Carolina to have completed a 10-year stint -- 1986 to May 30, 1996 -- as co-host of TV's Entertainment Tonight.

The TV show gave Tesh the chance to meet some of the rock musicians he already admired, including Gabriel, but he had become a fan of such bands as Jethro Tull, Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer in the 1970s. Maybe it's not such a leap from the Tesh's memories of Yes star Rick Wakeman "playing six keyboards all at one time" to the lush textures and piano touches on A Passionate Life. Maybe.

Tesh's touring band includes a dancer/choreographer and a bass player who has worked with Stratford's Loreena McKennitt. Dance will play its part in the next Tesh special on PBS-TV which will blend hip-hop styles and ballet. "The point is that when you think hip hop, you think John Tesh," he jokes.

At this stage of his career, Tesh is perhaps better known as a radio star than a hip-hop dance expert. Intelligence For Your Life -- The John Tesh Radio Show is broadcast in the London market on 97.5 EZ Rock weeknights at 6 p.m. The show is billed as being packed with "real-life knowledge, random intelligence and expert advice," all surrounded by music.