Dream start in Israel
Jewish Telegraph, February 2023
PROGRESSIVE rock giants Dream Theater opened the European leg of their latest tour in Israel last month.
And keyboard player Jordan Rudess, who is Jewish, headed there a day before the rest of the American band to visit a technology company in Jerusalem with which he works.
“It’s a great crowd in Israel,” said Jordan, the grandson of a rabbi. “They are very passionate about the music.
“And I always have a lot of friends there, so it’s a very active time for me and a lot of fun to play.
“So when I went over to Jerusalem for the day to hang out at Lightricks, which does visual software, I recorded a bunch of videos, met with the engineers and gave them some feedback.”
Once the rest of Dream Theater arrived in Israel, “we rehearsed, did our show and left,” Jordan told me from Stockholm before another sold-out show on Monday.
“Nobody was taking us on any sightseeing tours, although when I did some music there years ago with Aviv Geffen, I had a little bit of extra time and some friends took me around.”
Jordan doesn’t get involved in the politics that sees musician Roger Waters petition bands to boycott Israel.
“Musically speaking, it’s just a really cool place to play,” he said. “It’s sad to think that politics gets in the way.”
The group’s tour in support of latest album A View From the Top of the World, their 15th, arrives in the UK in a week with Manchester Apollo hosting the opening show on February 17, followed by Symphony Hall, Birmingham (February 18). Glasgow SEC (February 19), and London Apollo (February 21).
The group then have a break before heading to Japan at the end of April to complete the part of the tour that “got blown out by the whole Covid thing”.
“I’m excited about playing the UK,” said New York-born Jordan, who joined Dream Theater at the end of 1994.
“It’s interesting to follow the progression from the early days, before me. But when I joined the band, the UK was really a market that was not happening at all, but I’ve watched it grow to where we’ve got a big following there now.
“Dream Theater are lucky enough to have a pretty wide audience. We get all the young kids into playing guitars, drums and keyboards who want to be like Dream Theater — ‘School of Rock kids’.
“Then, of course, there’s the progressive rock crowd, which is a little older. And, because we also have the metal element in our music, that seems to attract a younger crowd as well.”
With concert venues having to shut down during Covid, Jordan — like countless other musicians — needed to find another way to express himself creatively.
“One thing I did is learned a whole lot about video and streaming,” the 66-year-old told me. “And I set up a Patreon, which I got really into because I’m a fairly social person and I like playing around on the internet, improvising and having fun.
“I ended up putting together a whole system to do my live broadcasts; I bought a bunch of lights and different cameras and just set up a really nice kind of environment for doing live streams .
“I still keep it going when I’m not stuck at home and I do some other different kinds of things like taking people on tour with me by taking lots of video.”
He added: “I also put together a solo album, A Chapter in Time. When I was stuck at home, I would escape to my studio and express myself musically and record everything I did without any particular plan to release it.
“But when I had a bunch of stuff, I listened back and thought, ‘wow, this is very personal’. It’s mostly piano-based, but I thought it would be something nice to offer fans.”
Jordan, who has released 17 solo albums, said it was a time to connect with fans all over the world “and people really appreciated the fact that I was making music, and just sharing it matter of fact”.
He added: “I’m not a musician, because I’m a business person, but because I love playing music. I thought I really shouldn’t be giving away this music for free anymore.
“So that’s when I set up the Patreon and I said to people, ‘it’s been a real pleasure playing for all of you. It’s been great emotionally, but I really feel that if you want to have this experience, then please contribute to the cause’.”
Anyone attending any of Dream Theater’s UK shows can expect a mix of older tracks along with a number from the latest album A View From the Top of the World.
“We have to be conscious of the fact that we have a lot of long songs and need to fit accurately in a certain amount of space,” Jordan said. “So it’s always a bit of a puzzle.”
After the tour, Jordan will attend the National Association of Music Merchants trade show in Anaheim, California, where he is planning to celebrate the 40th anniversary of MIDI “which is the technology that all keyboards and synthesisers use. So there’s a big event that’s happening at the show and they asked me to participate in that and write something”.
Visit patreon.com/Jordanrudess and dreamtheater.net
