Jordan Rudess interview (excerpt)

When you become in essence the front man for the evening, do you have to go into the show with a different mindset?

It’s different a completely different role from being a keyboard player in a band, and it’s a different role musically as well, and some of that may be obvious to people but when you’re playing with a band you have a drummer that’s constantly a beat even if you’re in Dream Theater where the beat keeps changing but still there’s a definite beat. As a keyboard player playing the music that I am it’s a different kind of musicality, it’s not so much defined rhythmically, there’s a lot of give and take so it becomes a little bit more personal and because I’m talking to the audience it’s a real connection, so the role is very, very different, but it’s not that different for me in terms of just who I am and what I’ve done in my life because I’ve always been a solo performer even though I haven’t toured around the world as a soloist I’ve done so many solo presentations and performances and certainly when I was younger as a young  concert pianist, so it’s just another kind of way for me to present myself to an audience which I love.

Next year marks your twentieth year as a part of Dream Theater, over that time it may be easy to say what’s changed, but what would you say is the one things that’s stayed the same in two decades with the band?

John Myung *laughs* he’s very consistent, he’s probably the most consistent person I know, he looks the same, talks the same, he’s still doing the same cool kind of stuff on the bass and that’s your consistent factor right there.

I have to ask, anything in the works musically either solo or with the band or both at the moment?

There’s some cool stuff, at the moment we’re not only mixing the new Dream Theater album but I’m also mixing my new solo album which is going to come out on Mascot records in April, the Dream Theater album is coming out in February, at the end of February, and the Jordan Rudess solo rock album is coming out probably like towards the end of April. So those things are really exciting and definitely filling up my plate as I prepare to leave for this big trip as well.

I always ask this of master guitar players, but in terms of piano and keys who for you stands out today as someone to watch?

Well I’ve always surrounded myself with talented people and a lot of young people and I’m always interested to kind of support younger artists who are trying to make it in this crazy world of ours. I could say a couple of names of people, one of them in a young artist whose name is Gerald Peter, another one to keep your eye on is Eren Basbug who is a conductor and I recently did a concert in the Czech Republic and he conducted the orchestra and did all the orchestral arranging of one of my big classical pieces, he’s still a young guy with a great future. Both keyboardists but Eren is also a conductor.

Outside of Dream Theater you’ve worked with a multitude of artists but is there anyone you’d love to lend your talents to that just hasn’t called you yet?

That hasn’t called, we sure there’s tonnes of people out there in the world that would be fun to work with, although we’ve toyed around with the idea I’ve never worked with Steve Vai, we never did anything together although we jammed together on stage one Dream Theater concert which was fun and I’ve always had a lot of respect for his playing. Another artist I think is wonderful and maybe one day I’ll have the chance to work with him is John McLaughlin the Mahavishnu Orchestra. If Peter Gabriel called me I wouldn’t say no to doing something with him, so yeah there’s plenty of people.