Voted as the “Best Keyboardist of All Time” by Music Radar Magazine, JORDAN RUDESS is well known as the keyboardist/multi-instrumentalist for platinum-selling Grammy nominated prog rock band, DREAM THEATER. At the age of nine years old he attended one of the world’s finest classical musical education centres, The Juilliard School as a child prodigy and left ten years later to pursue a career in rock music. Rudess will be touring Australia and New Zealand later this month and tells JON VAN DAAL what to expect on his first solo tour of the antipodes.
Jordan, thanks so much for your time.
Your welcome
Can you give us a run down on what fans can expect when the curtain rises on your Australian tour?
Well it’s called “Bach to Rock – A Musician’s Journey”. It is an opportunity for me to engage my fans and take them through my musical life. I started as a very serious young classical player studying at the Juilliard School of Music then escaping to the furthest practice room down the hallway so none of the teachers would hear me jamming on some boogie-woogie and blues. This saw me taking some students who were less up tight to check that out – I was really hiding the whole thing, very much.
I would also get into trouble if I played some Mozart adding an extra trill or an extra blues note or something like that – I talk about that in the show. It’s a chronological journey through my musical life, from that point leading up to the last twenty years with Dream Theater and everything in between. There is a lot of stuff that I have experienced along my journey that people don’t know about.
There are a lot of interesting things and challenges in the show – one of the aspects that I’ll talk about was a whole period of time when I was turned on to Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Yes and Pink Floyd. I loved it so much that I left the Juilliard School after ten years, then I realised that once I had left that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had no idea how to interface with anybody that was into rock – I was told that it was a sub culture with those people basically being bums in the street. There I was a “classical” musician and that whole period of time is something that Dream Theater fans don’t know anything about and I’ll weave that into the story.
So how long was that period – a couple of years?
Well it was definitely more of a journey, there were a lot of years that kind of went on, so I’ll touch upon those stories in the journey. What it does allow me to do is to use the piano as a home base – it is a very comfortable way for me to be at an instrument and tell the story as the show goes on. The piano is where it all started, so the evening is not only playing music but also telling these stories.
The way this all started was that my wife, Danielle, who is a theatre producer and I were discussing my desire to go out as a solo artist. I have been a solo artist my whole life, so that is nothing new making albums, what is new is that I haven’t gone out and toured extensively as a solo artist. With her theatre background Danielle said that you can’t simply go out and play music you have to have some sort of a conceptual idea around it and make it more engaging. Ok well let’s figure something out.
So, she had this thought that it would be fun to take people on a musical journey and I immediately resonated with that. I thought to myself, this is awesome, this is great and I have been having a really great time – I have done a bunch of shows in Europe and the States. It is very satisfying personally but it is also very cool to see how people respond to it. I come out after the show and sign stuff at the merch stand and the people have been very touched, not only by the stories but also with my output at the piano. I felt “wow” – this is something that is so meaningful to me and the people love it and I want to do more of it. To be able to come to Australia and New Zealand to do these shows is a dream come true.
In the late ’70s I use to go to prog concerts at the Sydney Opera House and I noted that National Geographic rated it as sixth in the top ten Opera Houses in the world. With your classical training you must be looking forward to playing there.
Oh yeah, that is awesome – I am looking forward to it
I certainly am looking forward to hearing you there in a few weeks. Now you talked about your early influences with prog bands but were there any others – jazz or something else.
Well my earliest influence beyond classical was the Beatles. I use to have an old 45 record player in my bedroom and had a number of 45s in my drawer beside the bed so I could grab one and put on the turntable. The Beatles were really important to me but I didn’t know too many bands beyond that – the Dave Clark 5, Herman’s Hermits. It was pretty limited and I wasn’t really quote, unquote allowed to be in that space.
One of the things that really blew my mind makes an interesting story. I really was so involved in the straight and narrow “Juilliard School Path” but I had one teacher who was open to other things like Country and Western and other influences. He took me to see The Who at the Fillmore East in New York playing Tommy for the very first time. I had never seen anything like it – I was like thirteen years old.
I was sitting in the middle of the first row in the balcony watching Roger Daltrey swinging his microphone. Pete Townsend was doing his thing, as was Keith Moon. I was never really a huge Who fan but the imprint that those guys did, that performance has stayed with me forever, very interesting. It was absolutely mind blowing as everyone came in with their hair down to their feet, smoking pot.
When did you make the decision to go on that journey? What was the first thing that helped you along the way to get into rock music?
So this is a long story, pretty much the reason it takes the entire show to explain, but when I left Juilliard I went to work in hotels and restaurants pretty much to support myself. I was playing whatever – cocktail piano or blues – what ever I needed to play. My first step getting into the music business was working with an artist called Vinny Moore.
Vinny Moore was an important step as Vinnie was an established name in the Neo Classical school. I played on his album and did some shows and this was when people first started saying “let’s take this guy pretty seriously”. It was that and playing with an artist called Jan Hammer that got me going.
I played in a band with Jan Hammer and Tony Williams, where we did some of Jan’s music and some of Tony’s music – that was another big step. Jan was playing all the leads on his keytar and I was playing all the orchestrations.
Not many people know that I also played with the Paul Winter Consort – a Grammy award winning group that were more into “Earth” music. I played piano with them and also synthesiser – more of a jazzy, earth meets ethnic vibe. Steps like that ended up getting me to where I am today. Specifically Dream Theater’s manager called Jan Hammer’s manager to see if he wanted to join the band. Hammer’s manager said “oh no, Jan can’t join Dream Theater, why don’t you ask Jordan Rudess”. So that was one of the things that led to me getting that call.
Was that when you played on “The Rudess Expirement” in September 1994?
Yes, this was the first show that I played with the band at the Concrete Foundation and I actually said No to joining them at that stage. I ended up joining the Dixie Dregs instead as they toured for a year. It was actually until after playing with the Liquid Tension Expirement (with Dream Theater’s John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy) that I finally said Yes
Actually, you have just come out of recording Dream Theater’s fourteenth studio album yet there has been precious little on its content.
I can’t really give you any details about it now but we shall be releasing a major press release very shortly so you’ll have to wait until then I am afraid.
Well thank you Jordan for your time and it sounds like the show will be a resounding success.
Thank you
Jordan Rudess performs Wednesday November 21, The Triffid, Brisbane; Thursday November 22, The Gov, Adelaide; Friday November 23, Art Centre Playhouse, Melbourne; Sunday November 25, Tuning Fork, Auckland; Tuesday November 27, Sydney Opera House Studio; Wednesday November 28, The Basement, Canberra.
For more info on the tour check out – http://davidroywilliams.com/tours/jordanrudess