Sydney Opera House
Tuesday November 27, 2018 :
When one hears the name Jordan Rudess, you most instantly think of his band, progressive metal super group, Dream Theater. Vocalist, James LaBrie is joined by four maestros of music with all having formal training with their chosen instrument, none more so than keyboard player, Rudess. As a child prodigy, he attended the world-famous Juilliard School in New York, training in classical piano, tonight though his “Bach To Rock” performance at the Sydney Opera House, nearly blew the sails off this iconic building as JON VAN DAAL informs us.
Jordan Rudess started this tour in Spain back in mid-February and the Sydney Opera House was his 38th gig on this tour that has seen him play four continents. Playing in what is one of the top ten Opera Houses in the world was not lost on the New Yorker, though with the show starting at 6.30 pm it felt a tad weird when we exited the Studio theater at 8.15pm.
I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been a big fan of Classical Music. When I was five years old, I reasoned that classical was music for “old people” and as such it wouldn’t be around for much longer. Here I am sixty years later and no doubt this genre has a bigger following than ever before, so bang goes my theory. That said, along comes a virtuoso like Jordan Rudess and totally changes my perspective of Classical Music.
Over the course of the night he would play everything on the piano from simple ditties to powerhouse pieces by Bach and Chopin to progressive rock favourites and his own compositions. Add to that noodlings performed on his Ipad with his GeoShred music app for both his fingers and nose and it had everything. This was a journey that took us from his musically cossetted childhood, through an uncertain period after leaving Juilliard and on to the heady heights of playing with Dream Theater.
This show was the story of his life and I’ll just relate a few of the highlights in what was a very special performance. Rudess began with a dialogue about how a family friend expressed how good Jordan was playing the piano. This was followed by his parents buying him a piano to use and next came formal piano lessons. His tutor told his parents that he was SO good that they should look at sending him to the Juilliard School – he promptly auditioned for that institution, was accepted and became a top student there.
Soon it became apparent that while he had the smarts to play the likes of Chopin and Bach, he also became aware of other forms of music such as boogie-woogie and pop music. Rudess was becoming so accomplished that he was soon putting his own spin on some of the old standards he played much to the displeasure of his straight-laced tutors. As such, he would sneak off to a far-off practice room with similarly minded students and started playing this “cool” form of music.
Rudess went on to explain how he had to keep his improvisations in one place and his classical practice in another and this bought us to the first song of the night, Bach’s ‘Partita No. 5 in G major’. This was performed perfectly and echoed the reason why this very building was built.
Rudess went on to explain that he was practicing two to five hours a day and that one day an advertising agency came to the school looking for a prospective actor. They were looking for someone who had to look very dramatic and be passionate about their music while performing in a Johnson & Johnson “Band Aid” commercial.
“The Julliard President thought of me, knowing that I had that look and that I could be dramatic”, Rudess explained. “I went for the audition and there were about seventy kids all crowded into this room. Most of them were child actors with about two or three of us from Julliard. I finally had my audition and this is what I played (the sounds of very forceful playing erupts from the piano) – I promptly got the job”, he announced.
“So originally, they were going to have an actor play the part and someone else do the piano parts, however I could play the piano and also do the acting part so they used me for the entire commercial. This was pretty cool for a thirteen-year-old and I went to the Plaza Hotel’s Grand Ballroom where I donned some tails and sat at the piano to record a thirty second arrangement”.
“They had a camera at the very bottom of the keyboard ready to capture my index finger (wrapped in a Johnson & Johnson Band Aid), however every time I finished the arrangement the Band Aid would have come off my finger. We ended up doing about thirty takes before the Band Aid finally stayed on. I thought to myself, well this product certainly doesn’t seem ready to go to market”, he went on to say to a chorus of laughter.
All and sundry were so pleased with how Rudess handled himself throughout the recording process that they thought he could make a career out of being an actor. “Well it paid well, but I had my heart set on being a classical pianist, though we all saw how that turned out”, Rudess remarked to more howls of laughter.
Another highlight of the night related to his post Juilliard days that saw the young Rudess quite unprepared for a life outside of the Classical Music scene. This saw him play lounge music in various bars and hotels before joining fledgling bands that paid little in the way of money to pay the rent. That was until became a member of Speedway Boulevard, a band that were about to put together an AOR album of the same name on Epic Records.
“I received an offer to be paid the grand sum of $50 per week (in 1980) to work in the studio, seven days a week, almost 24 hours a day, making music,” he revealed. “Now what young musician would turn that down. It also gave me the chance to use some of my prog riffs (he then plays a piece that was used in one of the album’s songs). We really thought that we would become stars as the guys that produced this album were famous for producing a lot of the Bubble Gum music in the 60s and 70s”, he continued.
“While all this effort was put into the band and the album, these producers must have done something wrong”, Rudess explained. “Three weeks after the album was released, it mysteriously disappeared. This was a huge release, from my perspective, and then three weeks later it was gone and these guys went into hiding”, Rudess remarked. “I thought that it would be a time for fame but it turns out that I had to wait a little bit longer for that fame and recognition”.
Later in the show Rudess explained how he, and his new bride Danielle, moved from the city of New York upstate to Woodstock for a slower lifestyle. This saw him again start playing bars and one night a local, Tony Levin (one of rock’s bass masters with nearly 400 albums under his belt – Ed) walked in and as it turned out we would play together in the band Liquid Tension Experiment. When he did finally meet Levin, years later, he didn’t mention the fact that he played in that little venue all those years before. Rudess then explained how his part in the band came about.
“One day the phone rings and its this manager guy who is representing Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater’s drummer at the time) and he says that Portnoy wants him to join this “Supergroup”, LTE. “Who is in this Supergroup”, Rudess asked. “Well there is Tony Levin, a guitar player named John Petrucci (also from Dream Theater) and Portnoy”, he said. Rudess thought to himself “Wow this will give me a chance to work with these guys and that would be amazing”.
Rudess then explains that after Kevin Moore left Dream Theater that he was asked to audition for Dream Theater. “I ended up not taking the position for a variety of reasons at the time – I had a gig playing on tour with the “Dixie Dregs”, I had a small child and a job, so it wasn’t right”, he stated.
“I ended up recording two albums with Liquid Tension Experiment and I had a great time working with John and Mike and a great time working with Tony. It turned out that I was the interface between Mike, John and Tony as Tony likes to write notation as did I. While they were all great musicians, they didn’t like to write notes so Tony and I would compare notes and talk music theory and write it all out”, he went on to say. Rudess then went on to play the Liquid Tension Experiment song ‘Hour Glass’.
“So, on the last day of tracking for the second album, John and Mike have this serious thing going on and came over and asked to talk to me. I walk into a room and they are sitting there discussing things and they asked the question. ‘So Jordan if we asked you to join Dream Theater at this point, what would you say’. About half a second later I said “Yes”. (to very loud applause from the assembled throng). That was some twenty years ago”, he went on to say.
“Dream Theater have a new album coming out in February called Distance Over Time and we shall be touring from March next year”, again to huge applause. “It has also been confirmed that we shall be doing all the songs from ‘Scenes From A Memory’ and my own new album will be coming out in April on Mascot Records, so it will be a big celebration. I would like to play for you some of my favourite Dream Theater songs in a medley – ‘The Silent Man/Hollow Years/The Spirit Carries On’.
While Rudess spent the majority of the night on piano, there was one session that was simply unreal – the playing of an Ipad with Rudress’ Wizdom Music apps and in particular his GeoShred app. He explained how this app was actually a musical instrument that one could play on their Iphone or Ipad.
“Are you ready for some serious shredding”, he asked to which there is a mediocre response, so he asks again “Are you ready for some serious shredding” with the response being much louder. Suddenly all manner of feedback, screeching howls and over the top keyboards emanate from this small flat device. From sheer ball busting shredding the demonstration goes into a Blues based song that is simply incredible. Once finished Rudess returns to his Yamaha Grand Piano and says “Yeah I had to get that out of my system”.
Right throughout the show we have heard a level of musicianship that has basically been in God mode and this wasn’t lost on the admiring audience but the last song was probably the best. The Dream Theater song ‘The Dance of Eternity’ has been described as one of the hardest pieces of music ever written and saw Rudess play this so easily and with such dexterity that it certainly cemented his place as one of the world’s top musicians, no matter what he plays. It was a fitting end to an incredible performance.
Reviewer and Photographer : Jon Van Daal
