Jordan Rudess

Eugene Friesen 0:30

Jordan Rudess, I have known you for 30 years, man,

Jordan Rudess 0:36

I hope that's okay.

Eugene Friesen 0:39

I'm feeling better and better and better. So must be working

Jordan Rudess 0:43

Nice.

Eugene Friesen 0:44

That's great. How are you I'm doing great. I'm doing great. But, you know, we live in New Hampshire. Liz and I moved into a nice, big house on three and a half acres here. It's quiet, so we're loving it. Yeah, all the kids. Yeah, I have six children. Everybody's swinging. You know, you remember little Noli. He's a professional musician in LA, wow. He's totally rocking. He's got more gigs than I ever had. What's he playing and doing? He's playing bass and guitar, and he's just making a name for himself as a really solid and reliable side man for now, but he and his he went to the Berkeley five week program when he was, you know, a junior in high school, and his roommate there has become his kind of lifelong business partner. So they have set up a studio in LA and they're producing other people and stuff like that. So, wow,

Jordan Rudess 1:37

that's awesome.

Eugene Friesen 1:38

How about your two god,

Jordan Rudess 1:41

they're doing great. You know, they're not kids anymore. Of course, they're 32 No, 31 and 28 Yeah. One of them, the older one does, is in the recruiting business, like a headhunter. Oh, yeah. Person, corporate, corporate recruiting, yeah, yeah. She wasn't casting doing very well. But then she kind of like escaped that, because she kind of felt, realized that that was a business that was just like, all consuming, 24 hours a day, not much upward growth. And then, even though it was good, good bragging rights for the parents, it was great thing. She got into corporate recruiting. And the younger one is in marketing. She's an associate producer at a company that does, like commercials for JetBlue and big, you know, companies and stuff like that. So

Eugene Friesen 2:38

they have, they have landed in the in the world of employment they really have. Are they in the New York area? Both of them?

Jordan Rudess 2:45

Yes, they are. Although my younger, my older one travels like all the time, because her job is totally flexible, so I never know if I'm talking to her and she's like, in Amsterdam or Copenhagen, right? You know, it's like, where are you today, kind of thing, so

Eugene Friesen 3:00

where are you on the planet? Yeah,

Jordan Rudess 3:02

exactly. So are you still doing the Berkeley thing?

Eugene Friesen 3:06

Yeah, I just started my 26th year. Hey, that's

Jordan Rudess 3:10

as long as I've been doing Dream Theater. Is

Eugene Friesen 3:12

that, right? Okay, yes, that crazy sweet thing, yeah, and the case of Berkeley, I mean, it's two days a week, you know? So when I think about retiring, I think, well, why? Why would I retire? I love it. You know, it's relatively seamless, and I know what to do, and I get, I get a big charge out of it. That's

Jordan Rudess 3:30

fantastic. And I hope you charge them a lot too, their expertise. One

Eugene Friesen 3:39

of my thrills there is, you know, I started a string orchestra there for the kind of new breed of string player that tends to come to Berkeley. And so we have this pretty powerful, like, 25 piece String Orchestra every semester, audition only. And, you know, we we write our own repertoire. I really encourage the kids to treat this like their band. You know, they've got some great like fiddle soloists, Celtic soloists, jazz soloists, people from different parts of the world who bring with them expertise from those places. You know. So pretty exciting. Yeah, well,

Jordan Rudess 4:14

you ever get, you ever get people who want to who are electrifying their strings, kind of thing. Oh, absolutely,

Eugene Friesen 4:22

yeah. I mean, the instrument I use is an NS five string. I used it on one of your shows when we played in Boston at the Orpheum Theater. I used my NS five string. And so I have a relationship with Ned Steinberger up in Maine, and so he supplies the electric instruments. Oh, yeah, any

Jordan Rudess 4:39

of the students use the Mark Wood violin.

Eugene Friesen 4:42

I haven't seen that in the last few years. Yeah, I know they're out there, and they may just not bring it to class because it's a little bit,

Jordan Rudess 4:50

I don't know. I got to grab a tissue, then I'll be right back. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, all right. I.

Okay, okay,

Eugene Friesen 5:30

well, I'm definitely hearing the lawn mowers out there. Oh, it's, it actually goes away.

Jordan Rudess 5:36

It actually put the years back in my gotcha. Gotcha. Okay, yeah,

Eugene Friesen 5:40

we're cool. Now we're cool. Okay, great. Well, let's just dive right in Jordan and so welcome to this beyond mastery podcast. I mean, the audience we're cultivating for this podcast, Jordan is a audience of classically trained players, and I consider you to be one of those. Wow. Remember, and and people in our community who have gone through kind of conservatory training, and many, at least in the string world, who were never exposed to the possibility of really improvising or playing alternative styles or playing any anything outside the notated page, so making that transition from the music that we are kind of raised up on and trained in and spent so much time playing and trying to get our wrapping our brains around our instruments and our fingers around our instruments right that some of us just never even considered taking a any kind of a kind of turn toward creative music and creative and collaborative music like us. So tell us a little bit about your trajectory. You're a wunderkind. You played great since you were a kid. You went to Juilliard pre and then can you, can you give us a nutshell of how that happened, of how you monstrous in your way,

Jordan Rudess 7:01

I became a monster visual effect, right? I love it. So, yeah, I mean, I think I was lucky, because my very first teacher was one of these, like, jazz type guys. He came around the house, you know, half an hour. You know, when I was seven years old, and he had no interest in teaching me how to read the notes once he understood that I had a good ear. So he just showed me some chords. And I don't know, I remember seeing some kind of, like, Circle of Fifths kind of thing or, you know, and then I kind of took that and just started to play and not even thinking about it, you know, from any particular point of view, I would just like, you know, see the chords, hear a song, figure out different inversions of the chords. So I had some of that going to the point where I was improvising a little bit and reading, reading some very basic music, and able to play my own stuff. Yeah,

Eugene Friesen 8:00

and in a way, it wasn't really improvising. This was just like a sandbox of possibility for you, right? Yeah, I

Jordan Rudess 8:08

didn't know. I didn't know there was any such thing as improvising. A matter of fact, one of the reasons that I started to study with a serious teacher is because a friend of my family came over and was literally watching me looking at a piece of music that was just a lead sheet with chords, and she obviously knew more about music than my family, and I was playing, and this woman says to me, Well, how are you what are you playing?

Eugene Friesen 8:35

Yeah, what are you processing here? Like I said, What do you mean? What

Jordan Rudess 8:38

am I playing? She said, Well, that's not written on the page. I said, Yes, it is. You have the chords and you have the notes and, like, I really didn't understand there, the notes are there,

Eugene Friesen 8:48

and what do you that's what made sense to you immediately. And she, and

Jordan Rudess 8:53

this woman, said, well, people just don't can't do not everybody can do that. I was like, Okay, so that's when I was kind of shuffled off to a proper teacher. Matter of fact, that teacher, her name was Magda, and she was the one that was determined to get me into the preparatory division of Juilliard. So I studied with her for a little over a year, and I learned, you know, the repertoire that I needed to audition. She was really determined about it, because her, the short version of her story is that her son, who went by the name of Bruce Steig, had gone to Juilliard, started to go to the college, and then left to join Guy Lombardo, his band. So, so she was horrified, and she in me, she was like, Okay, you're the one that's, yeah, we're gonna get you all trained, and you're gonna stay there. Of course, my story is that I went to the whole repertory division. Finished that went to the college for almost a year, and then I lit it off to play. Synthesizers and to improvise, put all the styles together that I knew to that point, amazing.

Eugene Friesen 10:07

So So you had, like, just encouragement from the get go to to kind of do your own thing. Well,

Jordan Rudess 10:15

from the Yeah, from the get go. But then it stopped. The encouragement stopped because

Eugene Friesen 10:20

so that year, that year with Magda, that was nothing but, like classical repertoire, yeah, no. And how did that make you feel? Or didn't, didn't feeling come into it as an eight year old?

Jordan Rudess 10:31

Well, what I remember about Magda is that she was one of these very passionate, kind of temperamental personalities. And she would, you know, give me little like kicks under the piano if I played a wrong note or hit something with the wrong finger. But she was also very loving, you know, she was kind of big personalities that really took me in. And so I think I felt very, almost like protected in that environment right away. And I think that's, that's what the classical kind of world did for me for a variety of reasons, where it embraced me and my talent and allowed me to kind of be who I was, even though I wasn't allowed to, like, really improvise, I still felt like I was in a really kind of almost like, secure, emotional place For my life. And what's interesting is that I started when I when I started at Juilliard. My teacher's name was Katherine Parker, and she decided that whatever I had learned, you got to go back and you got to kind of start again. So she started me, I remember with the box C major Prelude. And I thought at that point that, oh, this was a great opportunity to show her what I like to do. So I learned the first few measures of that piece, and I, you know, then I would just play the rest of it, whatever came into my head based on the first few measures. So, and I did that for her. When I went to the lesson, and she looked at, I remember, she kind of like watched me doing this for a while, and then she stopped me. She said, That's not what's on the page. I said, I know. I read, I'm I looked at the first few measures. I'm doing my own thing. She was like, no, no, you don't do your own thing. You have to respect the page and play it accurately and all the markings and all the symbols. So let's you know, this week, go back and learn the whole piece according to the page. And what

Eugene Friesen 12:25

age was this, Jordan, was this like, when you were still a kid? Or is this when your knowledge, or this when

Jordan Rudess 12:29

I was nine, when you were nine, right? Right? Yeah, so, but that really didn't, you know, nothing really, like, completely stopped me and my lessons, I would learn the piece, and I got the idea of that, but then I would like sneak into the practice room all the way down the hallway with some, like, school friends, and play some boogie woogie for them, and blues and whatever else came into my head, and then, you know, this kind of tidy up and come back and,

Eugene Friesen 13:00

Yeah, oh, that's amazing, then that you were willing to tidy up, as you say, and it was just like, like, like, yeah, just like, putting on some different clothes, you okay? I can do that, yeah. But, you know, I mean, did you, did you see some merit in it?

Jordan Rudess 13:13

My Yeah. I mean, my husband's life was my home life. I would play. My mother used to love bringing home, you know, fake books and Broadway, you know, songs and songs from movies, and I would just play them, you know, and I, and I was a hit at parties, you know, with the kids, there was a piano at the house. I could sit and play whatever songs. So I never really stopped doing that. But, you know, because of that extreme focus that is that type of childhood going to that kind of school, I was practicing, you know, hours a day, and that was, you know, big part of my life, especially because, you know, I would wake up with the slightest tickle in my throat or whatever, and I'd say, Mom, you know, I don't know like I feel the punish you, but stay home and practice. So I hardly ever go to regular school. And then when I did, they had these assemblies, as schools do, and every time there was an assembly, I'd get a little I finally show up at school. Every time there was an assembly, I'd get a little note, could Jordan Rudis please report to the auditorium to play the Oregon as the kids go in and out of the assembly. So, you know, I guess I lucked out.

Eugene Friesen 14:21

You were gigging from the early days, yeah, took the place school.

Jordan Rudess 14:26

It was a very, it was a very one, you know, focus kind of life. It still is,

Eugene Friesen 14:31

however. I mean, the technique that you developed and that you possess today is, is just, is extraordinary, you know. And one of the motivations for inviting you on this podcast was seeing a recent Instagram post you made of this. It didn't give the name of the piece. It was clearly Bach, but, oh yeah, what was that piece? Oh,

Jordan Rudess 14:54

I was playing a G major partita. I think that was

Eugene Friesen 14:57

just extraordinary. Control of dynamics and and the uniformity of articulation and interpretation. I mean everything absolutely clear and beautiful and contemporary, and you don't get that from just playing in school assemblies, right, right?

Jordan Rudess 15:18

Yeah. I mean that, you know, the reality of that is, I feel, you know, really lucky to have had my teacher. Catherine Parker, was the assistant to Rosina Levine for many, many years. And as you know, Rosina Levine was one of the top piano teachers of the last, whatever, 100 100 years. And when my teacher wasn't, occasionally, wouldn't be well, and I'd have to, she'd want me to go and study with Rosina Levine, so I had the opportunity to go and actually, you know, have some lessons with her as well. But that wasn't as as valuable as the time I spent with my main teacher. But I feel like that the technique that I was taught was probably from the best possible lineage. So, I mean, and that is totally the foundation of everything that I do. I mean, I value that so much, and also, so, you know, so I really, I think I learned some great things about how to take care of my hands and how to strengthen them, and how to remain loose. And, you know, all the things that you know, as we know, are, when you finally get it, it's like, oh, okay, amazing, but it's really hard to come like, you know, like, I'll work with people at the piano, and, you know, obviously try to get them, let's say, to do an arpeggio, to articulate something. And there are things that I can say, but the reality is, you're not going to be able to relax and play something fast and fluid unless your fingers are strong. So all these things are have multiple sides to them. So you know, like with the piano and the instrument, you have to get finger strength, and you have to get independence, and then when you start to put all of that together, that's when you can start to actually play something and have it turn out right, and to actually be able to relax and to be able to hear the each note. So if you're going to, yeah, I mean, you could say to somebody just, you know, relax and, you know, don't think about turning your thumb under and all that stuff. But meanwhile, if their fingers aren't strong, that's a whole nother part of the ball game that really needs to happen. So, you know, the unfortunate news for people is that, yeah, I mean, it looks like magic, and in a way, you know, it is magic that we play these instruments as we do. But you know, the sad part is that takes a hell of a lot of work, and it's very mechanical. You know, it's really, it's a lot, a

Eugene Friesen 17:43

whole lot of mechanical, aerobic, in a way, yeah.

Jordan Rudess 17:46

So no matter what you know, instrument you're playing, I mean, you know, okay, if you're waving your hands in front of a camera that's picking up gestures, well, then you know, that could be a little easier, although then you have to be careful with what, what you know, your depth Doesn't your height, and all doing all these things. Or, if you're sitting at a computer and you're you're a master of moving around loops, that's a different kind of a skill. But anything like a cello or a piano or a trumpet or, you know, guitar, these are, you know, like incredibly mechanical instruments, and there is no shortcut. Unfortunately, I'm so sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Eugene Friesen 18:21

I don't think that's news, I think, but not to you. No, I think for most of us who have attained a level of mastery, you know, our instruments, this is our world. And for us, the question more is, how do we get out of this world? How do we how do we escape the cage, you know, how do we get into that realm where, when we put our hands on our instruments, that that what comes out is something from our imagination, not our memory. Yeah, I

Jordan Rudess 18:49

feel like that is such a big thing. You know, I was thinking about well, because we had this scheduled. I was thinking about you this morning, and one of the things I was thinking about is years ago, when we were before one of the Paul winter concert gigs, I was just playing, as I usually do, and I think you turn and we were in the same room, kind of warming up, and you turned to me and said, Jordan, like, what are you doing? I said, I don't know this playing. And you said, like, you throw away more good music than most people right in their lives.

Eugene Friesen 19:19

I actually remember that

Jordan Rudess 19:23

so and I feel like I feel, in a way, that that's that particular talent or skill that I have is very unusual, and it's hard for people to truly, I mean, you under you understand, because we were hanging out together, and you you know, you know about what's going on, so you see what's happening, but most people don't really understand even what's what's really going on. That for me, like to sit at the piano. Actually, I'm sounding braggy, so I apologize for that. I don't really mean to sound like but this is just what happens. I guess is I'll sit at the piano and I just have an emotion or whatever. And I just start to play, and you don't know, okay, it sounds like a piece of music, because that's kind of like, I think one of my main guests to be able to do that, yeah,

Eugene Friesen 20:09

that's your language. That is how these emotional feelings just emerge. But for

Jordan Rudess 20:16

me, the way I describe that is I kind of compare it to speaking, because and you're an improviser, so you know exactly what I'm talking about. We have the we have this vocabulary. We have we play. We know our scales, we know our arpeggios. We have rips. Maybe we practice Blues scales in different ways and different configurations. So when we're improvising, then we're calling upon this vocal we're calling upon these musical words and phrases, and we're putting them together. And I often say to people that for me to do that is at least as easy as for me to do what I'm doing right now, because we don't I'm not looking at a script. I'm just hopefully coming up with words to describe the, you know, a situation the way I feel, or, you know, and that, and that, to me, is often harder than just sitting, sitting at the piano and just coming up with the musical words and putting those together, yeah, so, and it's really important I feel, and you obviously feel, to talk about these things, because to break out of that kind of like box, you know, like, there's so many musicians, especially in the classical world, who are playing what's on the page, and that's all they can do. And if you ask them to improvise, they would be absolutely stuck. That's right, and it's fine to spend your life playing, you know, just the written page. That's

Eugene Friesen 21:38

that's absolutely fine. That will never die. It's

Jordan Rudess 21:42

absolutely okay. Shouldn't do that. But there's this grand opening, this awake, this creative awakening. You don't have to do what I do or what you do, but you have to be able to, I think it's important for everybody to be able to, kind of, like, open that up like there is no reason to lock it down like that. Even if you're playing three notes, beginning you're playing, you start doing that. You know, maybe, like, put on a, I don't know if you hear the piano, I mean, so you see you're playing like, how many, you know, like, an exercise might be, stay like, within a click, right, and just see, like every couple of measures, see if you can just change it without stopping you know,

Eugene Friesen 22:33

exactly,

Jordan Rudess 22:35

you know, like, it's all

Eugene Friesen 22:36

and what, what you're implying is Start with a very simple parameter in a way, you know, something that's simple that you can really explore the boundaries of with calmness and with confidence, and then just keep growing your growing your parameters exactly.

Jordan Rudess 22:52

I mean, even if you start with two notes literally, or one note in different octaves, you know you're playing like I Yeah.

Eugene Friesen 23:10

Well, and the other thing you're talking about is, I mean, it's all kind of impromptu, but you're also keeping a groove, and for some of us, that in itself, is a parameter that can be studied and, you know, gotten together separately, yeah.

Jordan Rudess 23:26

I mean the group thing for sure. I mean, the reason that I would present this kind of, this, this opening exercise in this way, is because I don't want, I want somebody to establish some kind of a click. But the reason that you don't want to you want to get used to pushing your imagination, you know, forward. And since it's music, and since it's important to play in time, I think that doing it to a click is a good thing. And of course, if somebody's going to try that exercise of taking two notes, you can start really, really slow. Maybe it's like three, and then do something else, something else, something else, something else,

Eugene Friesen 24:16

you know, right? So this, this is great for kids too, you know, and it's something that's just been lost in our tradition for like, 200 years. I was reading this, this piano, a treatise from a piano pedagog, Johan hum, who is a contemporary of Beethoven's. And at the end of his book, he really encouraged people to engage in improvisation, because he said, it's dying out. People need to keep doing this. And that was 1828, when he wrote that. So it just tells us that, you know, up to that point, it was much, much more common to just engage creatively with the stuff. I sometimes think it's like, like when you give a kid watercolors or something like that. You know, they they. You want them to stay within the lines, but what they want to do is to taste it, you know, and see how it smells and how it looks on your clothes and on their clothes. I don't think we're really encouraged to use music that way, to really explore it.

Jordan Rudess 25:15

And it's a beautiful thing, yeah, because then you can start to get into a self expression, which I think is so healing. I mean, the reason that I play music, when I really think about it, is because of that, like when I was when I was a young person, well, my whole life, if I felt some kind of a strong emotion of any sort, I had something to get out of my system, I'd walk into the room where the piano was and I would just play, and it's the same, like, if I today, I have a strong feeling, even if it's just like I'm especially relaxed, or I'm, you know, whatever, the most healing, the best feeling for me, and the way to deal with that is to play and to allow that to come out, and it's not going to necessarily come out the same. If I'm saying, Okay, well, I feel this way. I think I'll play this Chopin piece, or I'll play this Debussy piece. I mean, that's beautiful. You know, there's nothing wrong with that. It's great. But I think it's even a more, more, well, definitely more personal, more magical thing to express yourself, like, who, who are we? Beautifully

Eugene Friesen 26:25

said, beautifully said. And you used a couple of times you used the word healing, which is, I just want you to say more about what that word means to you. Yeah,

Jordan Rudess 26:34

well, I'm a real believer in sound frequencies and healing and resonance. And you know, I've made through the course of my career, a lot of albums that piano focused, albums that are really with that intent in mind, where I'm kind of like offering a healing to myself, but also by sharing it with the world. Saying, hey, you know, this music, I would like this. I'm giving you this music because I think that it could really do something for your spirit, for, like, healing, whether it's a scientific kind of a thing, where it's certain frequencies are going to cause certain reactions, or, you know, medically, I believe in that too. But as a musician, unless of a, you know, doctor, scientist, I'm I'm more interested in, how am I, how am I connecting with the sound of the instrument? What is it doing to me? And then what can I bring? Because one of the reasons we play music is that like we do, is because we like to share with other other people and bring them into that spirit. Can be healing. That's right,

Eugene Friesen 27:45

and I think that that's something that we have in common, is that desire to share this kind of special emotional state that we know that music can elicit in people who listen, and first of all, that we experience ourselves. Yeah,

Jordan Rudess 27:59

you know the other, the other thing that I think about you very often, and I'm not, I'm not just saying that, but it's, it's real, but like, when I when I'll be improvising at the piano for like people, very often, I'll do what I know you do as well, which is, like, add your voice to it, Like, not words, just like you know you're sitting.

I just feel like it's like it's a way to connect, put the frequencies together, and at the same time you're you're even emitting more, more resonance, more magic, if you will, by doing that. And whenever I do that, I think of you because I know, because I know you do that. And I was do that, and when I and when I, when we were hanging out and you would do that, that made a lot of sense to me. I was like, Yeah, I get that. I feel that that's something that's really special. And it helps me when I'm improvising, to do that as well. It helps me. And I feel it's kind of cool, you know.

Eugene Friesen 29:05

So that's great. That's great to know, yeah, and when, when we talk about the kind of healing effect and also the kind of integration that you're hinting at that comes with improvising and with singing along with what you're doing, that is something that I think can be best explored improvisationally. I think it's kind of hard to do that with repertoire, not impossible, but I think what I learned in improvising and the kind of feeling of integration that I can sometimes feel in creating my own music and my own sound in the moment is something that carries over to my playing of classical repertoire too. There's something in the sound that, for me, has become a litmus of my true sound, of my kind of authentic sound that was really born in improvise.

Jordan Rudess 29:56

That's amazing. Yeah, I just thought of a great exercise for people who weren't. To try it, which is that if you have a, if you, you know, can sing at all what you it's a one note exercise. So let's say you've got, Ah, right. So sing that note. It's kind of like, similar to what else is doing. Sing that note and play some chords. Hold that note. Hold that note. Just keep holding.

Unknown Speaker 30:30

Yeah.

Jordan Rudess 30:37

See how many absolutely words you can do while you're holding that one. Yeah, good exercise. On many levels to see where's that in cut, you know, where's that note in common, let alone trying to hold that pitch while you're doing it. But on any level you can, you can start that. You can say, Oh, well, you know, I don't really improvise. But how about,

Eugene Friesen 30:58

yeah, I'm gonna, I'm going to come up with a I'm going to come up with the cello corollary, and take that forward. We're out of time for now. But can we say this is Jordan rudesk, part one.

Jordan Rudess 31:12

I love that.

Eugene Friesen 31:16

Great talking to you, Jordan. Thank you so much for everything we shared. And yeah, let's do this again.