Meet an L.A. music legend who is keeping his friend's work alive

Folk music, a symphony orchestra, Muppet Christmas songs, and opera singers come together in the cross Canada tour, ‘A Rocky Mountain High Christmas.’

It celebrates the legacy of late music legend, John Denver. Leading this ensemble is a man who was a personal friend of Denver’s and helped create much of his music.

“I told John once, ‘a lot of your songs are going to become part of world culture, Americana.’ The world will embrace them, and they’ll be folk songs,’” composer conductor Lee Holdridge told Kelowna10. “He was amazed I said that, but here we are and we’re seeing that happen.”

Growing up in Costa Rica, Holdridge took an early interest in music at age 10. By 12, he was composing his own music and his violin teacher encouraged him to pursue it.

Studying in Boston and New York, eventually he made his way to Los Angeles to write scores for Hollywood films and stars like Neil Diamond.

Eventually he would work with Denver. Describing him as ‘a joy to work with,’ Holdridge struck up a friendship in the process.

“John was a friendly, outgoing person. He was very much like what his songs are about…he was always nice to people.,” he said.

“Privately, he had his demons. He had a difficult personal life. One of the things he did that was very different from a lot of pop singers I worked with, he didn’t bring his personal life into the studio.”

Denver took an interest in symphony orchestras accompanying him on stage, so Holdridge wrote arrangements in that style.

A trunk filled with handwritten papers with the symphony scores would accompany the show on tour.

In 1997, Denver died crashing an experimental airplane off the coast of California, devastating fans around the world as well as Holdridge.

Following the tragedy, Denver’s business manager decided it was too expensive to keep storing the written symphony scores and threw them away. When Holdridge learned this, he was in disbelief.

Fortunately, he keeps the physical copies of every score he’s made for all the movies and artists he’s worked with.

Eventually artists, like Rick Worrall, took interest in recreating Denver’s music using Holdridge’s original notes, beginning the years-long process of recovery and digitizing the scores.

“It was a lot of work…Rick really put the time in,” Holdridge said. “He admitted he wasn’t an experienced copyist, so we had to walk through it step by step.”

The culmination of that work led to ‘A Rocky Mountain High Christmas’ at the Kelowna Community Theatre, Nov. 24 to 26, with famous hits and lesser-known performances; like a duet Denver performed with Olivia Newton John.

For Holdridge, this is about honouring an old friend.

“One night I was walking back from this theatre to the hotel, we had just finished a concert. I looked up, I said, ‘You know what John? I’m still working for you, you son of a gun,” Holdridge said with a laugh.

“It’s very nice to be a part of something that rekindles his songs and his memory, which is very nice.”