Tesh Brings His Kind of Music to KCET

The musical star of tonight’s KCET pledge drive special is John Tesh, performing yet another of his flamboyant concerts, this time in the lovely setting of Catalina Island. But lurking behind the program is the spirit of Liberace, who would surely have applauded Tesh’s ability to convert the dross of superficial music, ostentatiously presented, to the gold of fabulous record sales.

The show is filled with pure Tesh music, most of it from his new album, appropriately titled “Avalon.” It is presented alternately in the historic Avalon Ballroom (which once reverberated with the sounds of the big swing bands of Benny Goodman, Kay Kyser, etc.), and on the terrace of a magnificent, cliff-side building.

Tesh’s good-guy good looks dominate most of the numbers. Wearing a trim goatee, broad-shouldered, warmly communicative in his interaction with the audience and the other performers, he is an attractive and appealing personality.

When the music is playing, however, the program quickly becomes wearing for anyone with a low tolerance for predictable melodies and clattery rhythms. Tesh has written a few vaguely Spanish-sounding numbers (a flamenco dance team appears at one point), a lullaby and some polite rock tunes. Virtually every piece is constructed on repetitious two- and four-bar fragments, which are assembled into something resembling melodies.

But this is music that jazz players can improvise without a second thought, that composers can write in their sleep. It also is music that neither would bother to memorialize on paper (unless, of course, they thought it could generate the kind of revenues that it does for Tesh).

That it can receive the kind of accolades it does is testimony to the power of television, and, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken’s famous statement, the sad possibility that few people have ever gone broke underestimating the musical taste of the American public.

* “John Tesh: The Avalon Concert” airs tonight at 8 on KCET-TV Channel 28.