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Jordan Rudess (born Jordan Charles Rudes; November 4, 1956) is an American keyboardist, composer, and software developer, best known as a member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater and the supergroup Liquid Tension Experiment.
He was recognized by his second-grade teacher for his piano playing and was immediately given professional instruction. At nine, he entered the Juilliard School of Music Pre-College Division for classical piano training, where his first theory instructor was future collaborator Joseph Lyons. He studied at Juilliard for seven years under Katherine Parker and Adele Marcus.
After Juilliard, one of his first bands was an "electronic space music band" called Complex. Formed by Rudess and former Juilliard instructor Joseph Lyons, along with Sal Gallina, they began playing college radio and house concerts. In January 1977, the band performed at Hansen Galleries in New York City. "This is music of real interest and vitality, more rhythmic and popularly appealing than most so-called 'serious' music," said the New York Times of the performance, "yet never so blatantly exploitive as to arouse real cynicism." That spring, the band Ocean Star released an album featuring music by Complex. That summer, Rudess accompanied Lyons for a residency at the Lexington Conservatory Theatre in Lexington, NY. Rudess served as assistant musical director and co-composed scores for the theater productions with Lyons, including the world premiere of The Prevalence of Mrs. Seale by Otis Bigelow. The duo also performed a series of concerts for the Earful concert series throughout the summer.
When Bleu Ocean was assembling a team of fellow drummers to perform on the song "Bring the Boys Back Home," featured on Pink Floyd's The Wall, he invited Rudess for the sessions, since Rudess had played drums as a child. However, Rudess's performance was rejected by producer Bob Ezrin. At that time, Rudess had already chosen keyboards as his main instrument.
Rudess was part of a studio project assembled by bubblegum pop impresarios Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz, who were also behind The Ohio Express and The 1910 Fruitgum Company. In 1980, they ventured into album-oriented rock with Speedway Boulevard, which also featured touring members of Ram Jam. The group never performed live and disbanded shortly after the album's release.
After participating in various projects during the 1980s, he gained international attention in 1994 when he was voted "Best New Talent" in the Keyboard Magazine readers' poll following the release of his Listen solo album. Two of the bands that took notice of Rudess were The Dixie Dregs and Dream Theater, both of whom invited him to join. Rudess chose the Dregs, primarily because being a part-time member of the band would have less of an impact on his young family, a choice he was not given with Dream Theater.
During his time with the Dregs, Rudess formed a "power duo" with drummer Rod Morgenstein. The genesis of this pairing occurred when a power outage caused all of the Dregs' instruments to fail except Rudess's, so he and Morgenstein improvised with each other until power was restored and the concert could continue. The chemistry between the two was so strong during this jam that they decided to perform together regularly (under the name Rudess/Morgenstein Project or later RMP) and have since released a studio album and a live record.
Rudess encountered Dream Theater once again when he and Morgenstein secured the support slot on one of Dream Theater's North American tours.
In 1997, when Mike Portnoy was asked to form a supergroup by Magna Carta Records, Rudess was chosen to fill the keyboardist spot in the band, which also included Tony Levin and Portnoy's Dream Theater colleague John Petrucci. During the recording of Liquid Tension Experiment's two albums, it became evident to Portnoy and Petrucci that Rudess was what Dream Theater needed. They asked Rudess to join the band, and when he accepted, they released their then-keyboardist Derek Sherinian to make way for him.
Rudess has been the full-time keyboardist in Dream Theater since the recording of 1999's . He has recorded eleven other studio albums with the group: 2002's Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, 2003's Train of Thought, 2005's Octavarium, 2007's Systematic Chaos, 2009's Black Clouds & Silver Linings, 2011's A Dramatic Turn of Events, 2013's Dream Theater, 2016's The Astonishing, 2019's Distance over Time, 2021's A View from the Top of the World, and 2025's Parasomnia. In addition, he has appeared on the live albums Live Scenes From New York, Live at Budokan, Score, Chaos in Motion, Live at Luna Park, Breaking the Fourth Wall, and Distant Memories – Live in London.
In addition to working with Dream Theater, he occasionally records and performs in other contexts, such as a 2001 one-off duo performance with Petrucci (released as the CD An Evening With John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess), as well as backing up Blackfield on their first short US tour in 2005 and playing a solo opening slot for them on their second tour in 2007. He also contributed to Steven Wilson's albums Grace for Drowning and Insurgentes.
In 2010, Rudess composed "Explorations for Keyboard and Orchestra," his first classical composition. It was premiered in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 19, 2010, by the Chacao Youth Symphony Orchestra and guest conductor Eren Başbuğ. Rudess played all of the keyboard and synthesizer parts.
On July 28, 2011, in a poll conducted by MusicRadar, Rudess was voted the best keyboardist of all time.
Rudess appeared on the Ayreon album, The Theory of Everything, released on October 28, 2013.
Starting in the 1990s, he used a Kurzweil K2600XS during live sets until switching in 2005 to Korg's Korg OASYS workstation; he first utilized the Oasys station on Dream Theater's 2005–2006 20th Anniversary tour. He also employed a Muse Receptor hardware VST and a Haken Continuum X/Y/Z-plane MIDI instrument, triggering a Roland V-Synth XT and a synthesizers.com modular unit designed by Richard Lainhart and Roger Arrick. Influenced by Lainhart, Rudess was the first well-known keyboardist to bring a Haken Continuum onto a live stage. Rudess kept the Kurzweil for studio recordings and for some of his signature sounds, such as "the pig," which is often played in unison with the guitar or bass guitar.
In 2011, Rudess switched from the Korg OASYS to the new flagship Korg Kronos. In 2019, he added a Roland Ax-Edge keytar and a Hammond organ to his live setup, which were used on Dream Theater's 2019 record Distance over Time. His current live rig consists of the Kronos, along with a Continuum, a Hammond XK-5, a Roland AX-Edge, a lap steel guitar, a Harpejji, and an iPad.
Since 2001, Rudess has used custom-made swiveling keyboard stands on stage for both Dream Theater and his solo career, which are built by Patrick Slaats from the Netherlands. On Dream Theater's 2007–2008 "Chaos in Motion Tour," Rudess expanded his live setup with the addition of a Korg RADIAS, a Manikin Memotron, and a Zen Riffer keytar. Rudess stopped using his Synthesizers.com modular after the European leg of the tour due to its size and weight. He still owns the synthesizer and keeps it in his home studio. During the Progressive Nation 2008 tour, he introduced a Kaoss Pad 3 on stage for the closing medley.
For the 2009–2010 tour in support of Black Clouds & Silver Linings, Rudess introduced the Apple iPhone on stage, running an application called Bebot Robot Synth. Rudess originally used Bebot on the studio recording of "A Rite of Passage." In live performances, he utilized it on the same song, as well as in improvised solos featured in "Hollow Years" and "Solitary Shell."
On September 24, 2010, Rudess released the song "Krump," an electronica single, on iTunes. It featured the use of the new Roland Music Gaia, Roland's more recent keyboard.
In addition to recording videos, eBooks, hardcopy books, and support materials, Rudess has also served as a guest lecturer both on campus and online during the lockdown (or, as he described it, when the world stopped... for a while). This has been an ongoing effort for quite some time. He has been a lecturer for various periods at numerous institutes, music schools, and music colleges. Jordan Rudess taught music, with a particular focus on keyboard techniques, at Berklee College of Music in the United States and at Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) in India, and has conducted guest lectures at Stanford.
Wizdom Music created the following software:
Rudess has perfect pitch.
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