Jordan Rudess interview (excerpts)

On drummer Mike Mangini’s addition to Dream Theater following founding member Mike Portnoy’s departure in 2010:

Jordan: “One of the things we really wanted was someone who would be this really kind person who is from the heart and that we just have a really good feeling with. Because, you know, after losing somebody and having it be so traumatic, we wanted to just feel comfortable. And Mike [Mangini], he’s not only a great drummer, he’s such a nice guy, and he makes us laugh; he’s just a lot of energy all around. So there’s a lot of joy when we’re with him.”

On the response to Dream Theater’s latest album, last year’s “Dream Theater”:

Jordan: “It’s interesting when Dream Theater sets out to do an album, because we usually have a very firm conceptual base for the album, and this one was totally the same. When we went in, we wanted to make songs that were to the point, more concise in a lot of ways, maybe a little bit shorter, and there are definitely songs on the album that are shorter, but at the same time not sacrificing anything that we love about Dream Theater. A lot of what happened over the last two albums since Portnoy left is that we had a chance to re-evaluate, or revisit, what Dream Theater is all about, and who we are as people, who we are as musicians, what we wanna do, and come up with what we feel is a very honest kind of offering from us, musically and personally. So this last album was very much within that kind of framework. And we had Mike Mangini as a real part of it from the beginning, which was great, because, although he played great on ‘A Dramatic Turn Of Events’, he wasn’t really there for the writing process. So with this album, we got to kind of have his energy in there from the beginning, so we felt really good about putting it out. And then, when we put it out, the reception around the world was amazing; it was so great, it did so well around the world, and we were very, very pleased.”