A 365 day peace awareness campaign with multiple globally televised events in support of Global Peace and Green Initiatives. Bringing cultures from around the globe together for the common hope of a better place to live.

What is the Show of Peace Concert?

The Show of Peace Concert is a global opportunity for celebrities, musicians and world leaders to reach out and communicate to the rest of the world how we can all join together on the road towards peace.

In 1981, the United Nations General Assembly declared September 21st as the International Day of Peace, a day devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace. Following the SHOW OF PEACE Concert in April and in support of the UN’s International Day of Peace, ZZYX Entertainment will produce the second of the two global peace concerts.

“The Show of Peace” on Earth Day- April 17, 2010, live from Beijing, China, will be broadcast worldwide through both television and new media to a potential audience of over two billion people.

One Man’s Vision

Rick Garson, Executive Producer for the Show of Peace and Chairman of ZZYX Entertainment, personally has spent years and money in developing the creative concepts and relationship foundation to stage the “Show of Peace”.

Rick Garson’s journey for a global peace message started in1999 with a phone call from a representative of the Vatican. It was not the type of phone call Garson normally received, despite being a successful TV Producer. As a result,he dismissed the call several times over a six-month span, continually thinking the calls were no more than a colleague’s attempt at a humorous prank. It wasn’t until his assistant pleaded with him to finally take the call that he did and on the other end of the phone was a Monsieur from the Vatican.

The Monsieur wanted to meet with Garson for a special project involving Pope John Paul II, stating that they “knew what(Rick) had done in his life” and thought he could help. Garson always tells people, “If they (the Vatican) knew what I did in my life, I would be going straight to hell”. It turns out that the Pope had written his favorite prayers and poems from 1978 to 1998 and wanted to produce a book series, in which Garson did end up doing for him. In June of 2001, just four months from the 9/11 event, Garson, while sitting in production meetings for other projects,would get a feeling of urgency for a Peace Message.

Many around him thought he was joking. He would tell people “something is going to happen and there needed to be a peace message somehow”. He started to take passages from Pope John Paul II’s writings and set out to get some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry to read the words of the Pope as a message of peace. Some of the stars included Britney Spears, Faith Hill & Tim McGraw, Danny Glover, Aerosmith, NSYNC, and more. After 9/11 happened, many artists started to call Garson to be on board his peace message project, which led to the idea of actually turning this into a real Peace Message Event at the Vatican.

From 2001 until 2005, Garson worked with the Vatican and the Pope to create a Global Peace Concert in St. Peter’s Square. Unfortunately, the situation at St. Peter’s Square was not favorable for a globally televised event, with the location being used for church services weekly, limiting Production setup time. They tried to the hurdle the issue, but after so many false starts due to scheduling conflicts, Garson took a break from the Peace journey.

At the end of 2005, after Pope John Paul II died and the newly elected Pope Benedict XVI was in place, the Vatican once again reached out to Rick in hopes to now make the Peace Concert a reality. Garson grabbed his bags in a determined mind and once again tried to create the concert that he so much wanted to accomplish as part of his life works. And again, it was still not possible to agree on production needs and Vatican scheduling for the St. Peter’s Square. Garson went back home and closeted the Peace idea.

In 2006, Garson was introduced to a newly discovered platform and focal point for a message of peace in the United Nations International Day of Peace, a day adopted by the 36^th session of the UN and recognized on September 21^st. This was an exciting opportunity for Garson to finally unite the world for Peace through a global peace concert and with a great ally in the United Nations. The concert would be held in Geneva, Switzerland on the former grounds of the UN (League of Nations Building) on September 21, 2006.

Press Conferences were done, production began,and even the theme song, “One Day” produced by Swizz Beatz was created for the event featuring artists such as Jennifer Lopez, Sean Paul, Marc Anthony, Chris Brown, Doutry, Mario, Eve, and others. It was not until 4 weeks from the concert date that Rick was brought to a halt due to the 2006 Lebanon War between Hezbollah and Israel. It seemed that the Peace Concert on the former grounds of the UN was “too political” at a time of war.

With everything so far along already, it was decided to quickly move the concert over to Italy, where the Mayor or Rome wanted to be known as the “Mayor of Peace” and hoped that the International Day of Peace concert would do that for him. Rick jumped on the invitation and with the location of the concert to be in front of the Coliseum, he thought the concert would finally be a fantastic reality.

Again, a press conference took place, with doves released, as well as production teams scouting the location and quickly coordinating. One week following the press conference, Rick received a call from the Mayor’s office informing him that the concert had to be canceled. The reason – the Pope Benedict XVI Islam controversy on September 12th, where the Pope quoted an unfavorable remark about Islam creating a heightened amount of death threats to the Pope and making a public Peace Concert too much of a security issue. Garson returned home and in complete disbelief.

After returning from Rome, Garson spent the next year traveling all over the world, being invited by Qatar, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and others who wanted to bring Rick’s vision to fruition. He was invited to China in September 2007 by China Central Television (CCTV), where he found posters every where that said “One World, One Dream” for the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games. It was then that Rick decided this could be the place to finally hold The Show of Peace and deliver the important message of Peace to the world and now combining the musical sounds of the West and East to unite the world.

Since the time of his introduction to Pope JohnPaul II, Rick’s relationships have grown around the theme of a global peace initiative, also meeting Pope Benedict XVI, and world leaders from all regions,including the United Nations Organization. In recent years, he has gathered celebrities, musicians, and influential organizations to support a newly discovered platform and focal point for a message of peace in the United Nations International Day of Peace. Rick’s journey has now brought him to Beijing, China where the concert will finally beheld this April 17th and September 21, 2010.

How can you help?

Tell friends, family, co-workers about this initiative, tweet about it, talk about it on Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. If you have a website, please add a link to to Show of Peace – http://www.showofpeace.com/. The more who are aware, the more who support, watch, listen, the stronger and more effective this message will be. Isn’t it time for peace?