Let Dream Theater fans rejoice – the band has not only released a self titled album of new material this past September but on its heels comes a Technicolor bombast of the band in all its live glory via the recent chart topping double DVD Live At Luna Park [which also features a pretty cool documentary about drummer Mike Mangini’s entrance into the band & how they got ready for the concert film]. Both are worth having and both stroke that inner geek love for John Petrucci’s meteoric guitar and Jordan Rudess fast fingers on his bitchin’ keytar. After over a decade of mind-expanding swirls and zingers, Dream Theater are at the top of their game and last month I was able to have a quick chat with Rudess about what it’s like being in a band like Dream Theater and why this album may be their strongest yet.
We all know that you love all your little technological gadgets and gizmos. So being in Dream Theater must be adream for you.
(laughs) Yeah, I’m so into all the technology and stuff so having a great outlet to use it all is wonderful.
With a new album and live DVD, are you excited about getting out there and touring?
Well, the touring starts actually in January. We have six weeks in Europe to kind of start it off but then of course the tour goes on from there. We’ll come home and I think, although it’s not in my calendar yet, I think we’ll cover the US and then from there we’ll continue to kind of cover all the rest of the world.
What do you do in your time off?
(laughs). I’m always busy. When I finished the Dream Theater album I went right into recording an album with Tony Levin and Marco Minnemann that actually came out before the Dream Theater album. It came out on September 5. So when I was done with that then I was working on my pledge campaign.
You are a big part of the sound of Dream Theater. How do you create this music? What is going on in your head?
That’s a good question. Dream Theater is a very interesting kind of stylistic blend of music and having started as a classical musician years ago at Juilliard, with being interested in other styles as well, it kind of fits in nicely; that it’s not any one in particular style. We use a lot of influences. Also, I’ve always been an improviser. I’ve always been interested in composition. A funny story, when I was at Juilliard in the pre-college division, I was a Major in Piano but I was taking Composition lessons and I didn’t have much time to do a composition because I was so busy practicing piano. So I would go to the Composition teacher and improvise and the Composition teacher was pretty smart and he picked up on the fact that I was a really good improviser. So he kind of went with it. One time he said, “Ok, play it again,” and I went, “I can’t cause I just made it up right now.” (laughs) So that type of skill comes in handy when it comes to helping write the music for Dream Theater because we go into the studio and we tend to be very quick, bouncing off of each other and writing the music like that. So there’s a lot of improvisational skill and just energy bouncing back and forth.
This is the twelfth studio album. How do you keep the albums sounding new and fresh after all these years?
Well, you know we always have a bunch of time in between recording albums. Our general schedule is we record an album and then we’ll take a little break and then we’ll go on tour for a year or so and then we’ll take a little break and then we’ll go back in the studio. So in the time that we’re on the road, in that mode, a lot of anticipation or build up happens for our next chance to get in the studio and write a new album. So by the time we actually walk in the door of the studio to start again, we’re already itching to get music out of us. And sometimes while we’re on the road we’ll write riffs at sound checks and just record them so we’ll have them when we go back in, some ideas to go from. But there’s no problem for us to kind of really be fresh and feel creative to come up with new stuff when we get into the studio, cause by that point we’re really ready for that part of what we do.
But we’re all really excited about it. We self-titled it because Dream Theater is at a point right now where we’re feeling like, musically and personally, we’re at our best point we’ve been in probably in my whole time, fifteen years, of being in this group. So it’s a really cool time to discover Dream Theater and it’s very exciting that we have our new album out.
What song on the new CD gave you the tingles the most?
I tend to love those longer kind of forms that we do and one of the great things about this album, I think, is that a lot of it is a little bit more to the point. Some of the songs are a little bit shorter for Dream Theater songs. But that being said, I tend to gravitate towards a song called “The Illumination Theory,” which is a kind of big epic, if you will. There are some parts in it that are really kind of cool. It features a middle section that is just kind of a breakdown and it’s being played by a string orchestra and it’s coming out of almost what seems like a three dimensional kind of ambient sounding part. So that’s kind of a tingly highlight.
Out of all the songs on the new CD, which one do you think is going to be the most difficult to recreate live and why?
It’ll be that one, definitely. It’s complicated and it’s long so it will definitely be slightly challenging.
We all know that John Petrucci is a phenomenal guitar player but how is he as a producer?
He is really, really good at it. He’s very focused, he’s very calm, he has a lot of good ideas, he allows everybody to be their best. It’s really a good time to be in Dream Theater. I’ve seen him in the last couple of years taking on this new challenge and just really shining.
What was the so-called surprise composition on this album? The one that almost didn’t make it on or came in at the last minute?
The one that came in at the last minute was like the secret ending, if you will. If you let the album play long enough there’s the part that happens after “Illumination” that’s a little almost like a pleasant afterthought of the whole album, something I had been playing on the piano at home, just kind of vibing on, and I played it for John and the guys and they said, “Wow, we love that.” (laughs) It was kind of last minute but they were like, “Let’s add that.”
Dream Theater has pushed every boundary there is in Prog Rock. What do you do next? What CAN you do next?
Well, you know, we keep on having fun, we keep doing what we’re doing and the technology sort of marches on so I don’t see a problem picking something to do. There’s a whole world of possibilities there. That being said, I think that one of the things that we’re very conscious of with Dream Theater is that Dream Theater has been around for so many years we have to be somewhat true to the style; dare I say the brand of Dream Theater. So we try to keep it kind of focused on that and keep Dream Theater the best that we possibly can. At the same time, trying new things, different techniques on our instruments.
I try different instruments completely with different ways to be expressive. For this album, I used an instrument called the Seaboard, which is like the evolution of the keyboard. It’s an instrument that does like a continuous touch but it’s a keyboard form and it allows me to be expressive like a guitarist would or a violinist. So there’s things like that that keep on bringing us to another plateau and help us to do new things and keep us interested. I mean, the reality is if I just played the piano and I was writing music with that, that would be interesting too. But what we do is music and we spend all our time thinking about it and there’s a lot to be expressed. There’s a world of ideas out there to kind of go with it.
When you were a kid, did you want to be like Keith Emerson, who has a gazillion instruments on stage with him?
Yes, definitely (laughs). Keith Emerson was definitely a big influence in my musical life. I had some studying at Juilliard and I liked other kinds of music but I didn’t know that much about it and when I heard the album Tarkus, it blew my mind and I said, “Wow, that’s incredible that you can have that kind of power as a keyboardist.” So when I was about seventeen or eighteen years old, I started to discover synthesizers and I really wanted a mini Moog and I started clipping pictures out of magazines of Moog synthesizers and Rick Wakeman and all that stuff (laughs) and that was my next dream for sure.
What was the most nerve-wracking experience that you’ve had on stage?
It was recently, like a year ago, a year and a half ago, and I was in Mexico and we were playing and I have this keyboard stand that is on like hydraulics so the keyboard tilts in different positions to the audience, which is really fun and effective for the audience. But about twenty minutes into the show I hit the button that tilts the stand and the whole keyboard was literally facing the audience. Then I did my little part that I play in that position and then I hit the button to go back and it got stuck (laughs). The guys couldn’t fix it during the show so I had to play the entire concert in a completely unusual bizarre position.
As a musician, what do you think is your greatest asset?
I always look to my very strong foundation to my playing. I had a really good background with some of the best piano teachers in the world and that kind of helped me to really be able to play whatever is in my mind. So I feel like that training is a part of me that is the most valuable.
With all this technology that’s coming, would you say that might be what most excites you about playing music in the future?
It’s a combination. If I just sit at my Steinway piano, I just love playing and it’s the core of who I am. I think that tells the biggest story of my time here on the planet. But at the same time, I really do love the technology and am always interested in other ways of expressing sounds and it really excites me. I started this app company a couple of years ago called Wizdom Music and I started it because I wanted to work on ways to coordinate audio and visual worlds together. And that was to me one of the most important technology experiments I’ve kind of put forth. I think there’s a lot to be said about that. When I discovered the multi-touch surfaces, like the iPhones and iPads, I was really turned on and I thought, wow, this is really cool. It opens up a whole other avenue of possibilities for expression on an electronic instrument. And that’s a big part of what I’m doing at this point.
Within the Progressive genre, who out there that is kind of new and up & coming makes you enthusiastic the most and gives you hope that this music will survive?
In the world of Progressive Rock music, and even kind of metal, there is a new band that I really think is doing some great stuff and they’re called Haken. They’re young guys but they’re kind of doing the progressive style of it. It’s very cool and there are a lot of great groups but this is the one worth mentioning. I think they’re really excellent.
What happens for you next? What is your next goal for yourself as a musician?
Basically it involves continuing on the path of working on my electronics side and my acoustic side as well. I’m working on an interactive version of a solo piano album that I’m doing right now. So putting those two worlds together, the acoustic and the electronic in an app that you can go in and interact with my piano music and share your own version that you’ve done with your friends is kind of like a good place for me. It’s what I’m investing myself in as well as following through and delivering my pledge campaign, which is an orchestral album which should be done in the next couple of months. So that’s kind of what’s up next.
And we can find out about your endeavors through your website, I assume.
Yeah, it’s www.jordanrudess.com
Rudess will be performing next with classical pianist Judith Lynn Stillman next Monday, December 9, 2013, at the Nazarian Center For The Performing Arts, Providence, Rhode Island, joining together for a special performance of Mozart’s Concerto For Two Pianos.
