Ian Tescee

Born in Indiana and raised in Colorado, Tescee has early musical memories (his dad’s jazz albums and his mother singing showtunes). Soon Ian was listening to rock’n’roll, playing drums, and creating his own light shows. As he entered his teens, he started recording songs and learning to play guitar and keyboards. During high school he played tympani in the concert band (even today he uses the sound of those orchestral drums on all his recordings), played in rock bands (Perihelon was named after the astronomical term for the point in a planet’s orbit that is closest to the sun), and listened to music ranging from classical (Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia and the soundtrack to the film “2001: A Space Odyssey”) to classic rock (The Doors, Iron Butterfly and Focus). After graduation he toured the Midwest for a year in the band Autumn before moving east to attend Cornell University where he took courses on computer programming, classical music appreciation and physics (Carl Sagan was a guest lecturer). Ian’s roommate was majoring in astronomy, which intrigued Tescee, but he spent most of his time in his room recording music.

Soon Tescee was also recording other musicians, and he wrote and published a book, The Musician’s Guide to Recording (used as a college text for several years). He received an honorable mention from the American Song Festival competition and played folk music in coffee houses in New York State. He returned to Colorado where he joined the top regional bluegrass-country-rock band Radford&Lewis (Tescee sometimes took center-stage to sing lead vocals as his rock’n’roll alter-ego, Brian Tuemer). Tescee opened the studio Startsong Recording, Inc. and worked with Firefall, The Auto-No (whose CD won Colorado awards), Zen Radio (another top Colorado alternative-rock band) and Randy Zambola (a national award-winning dulcimer player). Tescee has written and recorded original music in many genres, often with lyrics, but has only released his space music on CD.

Ian recorded the bulk of A Traveler’s Guide to MARS using synthesizers (keyboards and electronic drums), but as with all of his recordings, he plays analog guitars throughout and sings on one track. Also thrown into the mix are a half-dozen authentic NASA commands and a countdown, a cello solo by symphony-player Nancy Snustad, and the faint quoting of a line from Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Lost City of Mars.” Most of the music was composed by Tescee, but “Beneath The Ice” includes music written by electronic musician Russell Storey, and “The Wooden Prince” is based on the theme by Béla Bartók.