Derek Sherinian

Derek Sherinian — American keyboardist — is one of the few musicians who made the keyboard a front-rank solo instrument in metal and progressive rock. He joined Dream Theater in 1994 and stayed until 1999, recording Falling into Infinity (1997) and the phase in which the band tested routes outside the format that had established it. Before that he had already worked with Alice Cooper and Billy Idol — completely different contexts, which gives the measure of his versatility. After Dream Theater he put together Planet X, an instrumental project fusing metal and jazz, with material of extreme rhythmic complexity. In the 2010s he joined Black Country Communion alongside Glenn Hughes and Joe Bonamassa, and later Sons of Apollo — hard rock and progressive bands in which his keyboard shares the foreground with the guitar. His sound is recognisable: organ and synthesiser timbres with distortion, phrasing that answers the guitar as an equal, and a soloing approach drawn as much from Jon Lord as from jazz fusion. Few keyboardists in the genre can be identified within three bars.