A Geodesium Meetup With Alan Parsons

As a musician, the “Celestial Rhythms” concert — performed at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium in May 1985 — was a special event. Meeting up with the noted science fiction author Dr. Isaac Asimov made it an even more memorable experience for both Carolyn and me. We’d been avid readers for decades.

Asimov was a friend of the Hayden Planetarium. After the concert, he gave the keynote lecture at the banquet of the Middle Atlantic Planetarium Society convention, being held at Hayden at the same time. We knew in advance The Good Doctor would be in attendance at our concert. So I prepared an arrangement of I Robot, the title track of the Alan Parsons Project album, for us to play. This was to be the encore of the concert. I dedicated it to Asimov, sitting in the audience. That performance is now immortalized on the Geodesium album, Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live ’85.

I thought that someday, if I ever got a chance to meet Alan Parsons, I’d tell him about that special night, when I’d actually gotten to play I Robot — for “I, Robot” author, Asimov!

It only took 35 years… but that time finally came in February 2020, at a meet-and-greet event before an Alan Parsons Live Project concert in Denver. Another memorable experience — finally getting to meet someone who has provided a soundtrack for our lives, whose work has inspired a lifetime of music-making.

Alan Parsons gets the Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live ’85 album from Carolyn and Mark Petersen.

I got to ask Alan if he had ever met or talked with Asimov; he replied “Eric (Woolfson) did.” I told him how I’d recorded his piece as an encore, and made a verbal dedication to Asimov during our performance. And I presented Alan with the Celestial Rhythms: NYC Live ’85 CD. He graciously asked me to autograph it for him, which I was honored to do.

And as they say, “Pics or it didn’t happen…”, so here’s the proof, with Carolyn as my witness!