Jordan Rudess has been Dream Theater's keyboardist since 1999, and came to the band by an improbable route: he was a classical piano prodigy. Born in New York in 1956, he entered Juilliard at nine and was heading for a career in art music when he decided to abandon it for progressive rock — against his teachers' explicit advice. That double grounding defines his role. Rudess plays keyboards with a concert performer's technique and a rock soloist's vocabulary, and is the only member able to duel with John Petrucci as an equal: the passages where guitar and keyboard trade identical phrases at maximum speed, a trademark of the band live, exist because there is someone on the other side equipped for it. He joined in time to record Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory (1999), regarded as the group's peak, and is on everything since. Before Dream Theater he passed through the Dixie Dregs and was part of Liquid Tension Experiment with Petrucci, Mike Portnoy and Tony Levin — that is where the band came to know him closely. Away from music he is one of the most active figures at the intersection of instrument and technology: he has developed musical applications for mobile devices, among them GeoShred, and works on creating new performance interfaces.
Bands they were part of and guest appearances (feat.) on other bands.
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