Project Description
Interview with
JORDAN RUDESS
from
DREAM THEATER
Interviewer: Paul Tadday
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Voted “Best Keyboardist of All Time” (Music Radar Magazine), virtuoso musician/composer Jordan Rudess, will embark on an Australian & New Zealand tour this November performing his solo piano performance, FROM BACH TO ROCK: A MUSICIAN’S JOURNEY.
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“Calling Jordan Rudess a legend is an understatement” — Keyboard Magazine
“Jordan Rudess has journeyed from the depths of tradition to the ever-expanding outer limits of musical possibility, inviting listeners along for the ride. The results are, unsurprisingly, consistently beyond world-class.” — The Musical Melting Pot
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You’re about to come to Australia as part of the “Bach to Rock” tour. How long has the tour been going so far?
Well, I’ve done a round of shows in Europe and I’ve done shows in America as well. And this will be the first time I’m coming to your neck of the woods as well as Asia and South America. It’s very exciting that I have the opportunity to join you in your country.
I’m bringing the “From Bach to Rock – A Musician’s Journey” to Australia, which is really fun because it’s a very intimate look inside my musical world and my path; and how it started when I was very young in a strict classical way and rolled around to where I had this discovery of progressive rock and rock music; and ended up of course with me joining Dream Theater and all the things I’ve done on my own.
The tour’s really about being at the piano and not only playing, but also there’s a lot of story telling as part of it. So it’s a chance for people who are Dream Theater fans to come and see me in a way where they might discover something really new; and of course anybody else who is into my music that wants to go through this journey.
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I’ve always thought that your role in Dream Theater probably only touches a little bit on all the aspects of different genres that make up what Jordan Rudess does.
I think the majority of Dream Theater fans don’t actually know my whole story and I’m sure that a lot of people would have fun finding out about it. It’s a really fun format for me and it seems to be something that people are really enjoying for a couple of reasons. One of which is that, playing the piano is a real home base for me; it’s how everything got started and it’s one of the best ways that I can express myself musically.
So having the piano as kind of a mechanism for being able to tell the story and take people on this journey is awesome. It’s just fun and I love telling some of the Dream Theater stories and things that people have never heard before and sharing some insight. It’s really an opportunity to get a little deeper and to have some fun in that way.
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What was the catalyst for doing this particular tour at this time in your career?
Well, I’ve always been someone who loves to do solo piano stuff, it’s how everything got started. My career got to a point where I was so busy doing all my band stuff, starting with the Dixie Dreggs, Liquid Tension Experiment and Dream Theater for so many years that, even though I’ve always been a solo artist and I put out records and stuff like that, there’s only so much time in a day. But I kind of finally felt like, this is a passion of mine and something that I really love to do. I want to start going out there and sharing in this way before any more time goes by because I really love it. It’s such a wonderful feeling to walk on stage and there’s a piano there and I can just do my thing.
It’s so different to the Dream Theater thing, which I also love. But it’s also a very different kind of thing on every level. One of which is a musical level, which allows me to just kind of express myself without the whole band. And the other is just because there’s not a whole lot of gear around. It’s more scaled down in that way and it’s easier. So there’s a lot to be said about that.
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Speaking of ‘gear’, are you going to bringing any of your ‘wizardry’ with you on this tour? Any bells and whistles and different gadgets that you’ve put together over the years?
Well I’m going to bring my latest instrument for iPad, for iOS, it’s called “GeoShred”. So although most of the concert is on piano there is a part where I get up and shred on GeoShred. And it’s definitely part of the journey, because I own this company call Wizdom Music and I’m so involved in creating cutting edge, next generational musical instruments. It’s really fun to turn people on to GeoShred. The Keytar doesn’t get a run, but I’m sure it will on the Dream Theater tour.
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“The Unforgotten Path” was the last solo album of yours, which was in 2015. Is there a new Jordan Rudess solo album in the works as well?
Yeah there is, and actually it’s getting mixed as we speak. The Dream Theater album’s getting mixed as we speak and so is my solo album. I actually created a kind of prog/electronic metal solo album which is gonna come out on Mascot Records. Although I don’t have an exact date, we’re planning to get it out in April if all goes smoothly. So first we’ll have the Dream Theater album come out in February and soon after that there’ll be a new solo album from me, which I’m really excited about. It was a real chance for me to stretch and use all my wacky, crazy sounds. I like to kinda refer to this type of sound as “Hyper Prog”. It’s a little bit wild.
I do basically all the writing and everything in my studio and all the keyboard tracking and demoing. And then I send stuff out to my guest artists and allow them to do different solos. And it’s a whole big production job after the work is done. And I’m totally looking forward to when we release all the information about the album. I haven’t released a rock album in a while. It was a great party for me to do this and I pretty much went nuts doing it. So anyone who’s really serious about prog music, progressive rock and keyboard madness and wizardry will really get a kick out of this album.
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How does the process of songwriting work for you?
I’m a big improviser and so I can sit down at the piano when I’m in a peaceful kind of state and kind of feeling warmed up generally ideas flow pretty easily. I don’t sit down at a scheduled time; I just go more with the inspiration of things. And even more than composition, I’ll sit down and just play. I’ll just walk into my piano room and turn on Facebook Live and just start streaming from the piano; and I’m just improvising. I’m playing whatever comes into my head. So I’ve never had a problem with ideas coming into my head. Maybe more of the problem is sitting down and taking the time to commit things.
I guess anybody who is able to just have the music just kind of flow out of them, it’s a different kind of an exercise to stop the action and just say, well okay I’m gonna commit this one to paper or recording and present that as my next piece. So that’s the interesting musical life/challenge that I have. The music does, quite often, flood out but it takes some time to actually write it down. One of my old friends is a musician, a cellist; he said, “Jordan, you throw out more good music than most people make in a lifetime”. Because he knows me to just sit down and start playing, he says, “What is that?” I say, “I don’t know.” He says, “We’ll record it.” I say, “Nah, it doesn’t matter.”
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When it comes to remembering musical ideas when he’s not in front of his piano, Jordan surprisingly uses very low-tech techniques.
I use a voice recorder or something and I’ll just hum. I’ll be in the car and I’ll be like, “Oh my god I’ve got an idea” and I’ll just pick up my iPhone and start riffing on the voice recorder just to get something down.
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Jordan is always on the cutting edge of technology when it comes to music and I was curious to know where he sees the future of music in this technological world that we live in.
Well, I’m very interested in the technology and what people do with it to influence the style. And my ears have been very open to the ideas that have been going on in the electronic domain, because the technology very often pushes the stylistic boundaries of what’s going on. Artists like Aphex Twin or Artica that are serious with the idea of electronics, when I see people embrace that and use it in music that is more towards the centre of what’s happening, then I get excited. These are influencers that are more on the edge, doing crazy things but their influence is meaningful and powerful; and it starts coming into the music that we listen to.
I was just listening to the new album by my friends in Haken and they kinda do a little bit of that, where they’ll take a little bit of an electronic thing and all of a sudden you say, “Oh, well that’s cool”, that kind of a fresh, interesting approach. Or I’ll do that on my solo albums. Like on my new album I have a lot of influences from that kind of place. So that’s one part, but then there’s also the instruments themselves influence what’s going on stylistically. So definitely a combination of the tools and the ideas will definitely lead the way towards what’s happening in the future.
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With a new Dream Theater album due to be released in early 2019 a world tour is expected to follow.
Yeah, it looks like we’ll probably be hitting the road in March, starting in the US and yeah, it’s gonna be a busy year! People are really gonna love this new Dream Theater album too. I think it’s really gonna get a lot of support from fans around the world. It really does kind of hit home for the Sound of Dream Theater. It’s somewhere between a country and western kind of vibe! (Laughs).
We like to open it up and use different influences. Being progressive is kind of like a soup, and then you can bring in all kinds of interesting influences. That’s definitely the fun of it for both the listener and the artist, for sure.
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Jordan Rudess
November 2018
Tour Dates:
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Wednesday Nov 21
Brisbane – Triffid
Thursday Nov 22
Adelaide – The Gov
Friday Nov 23
Melbourne – Art Centre Playhouse
Sunday Nov 25
Auckland – Tuning Fork
Tuesday Nov 27
Sydney – Opera House Studio
Wednesday Nov 28
Canberra – the Basement
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For more:
Jordan Rudess and Wizdom Music
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