John Petrucci is best known as the guitarist and founding member of the progressive metal band Dream Theater. He is also the band’s producer and main lyricist as well as an original member of the acclaimed Liquid Tension Experiment with Tony Levin. John is a long standing veteran of Joe Satriani’s prestigious G3 tours along with Steve Vai, Eric Johnson and Paul Gilbert.

John proceeded to take his band on a very successful musical journey including many gold and platinum CD and DVD releases (see “discography”) as well as extensive world tours (see “tour dates”). He would go on to receive many notable awards in the various guitar publications throughout the world, including the 2007 “Guitarist of the Year” as named by the readers of Total Guitar magazine and most recently “Best Metal Guitarist” in the 2010 Reader’s Choice Awards poll in Guitar Player magazine.

The year 2000 brought with it the unveiling of John’s record label, Sound Mind Music. Created and run by his wife Rena, it’s first release was “An Evening With John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess”, an acoustic-instrumental live concert of Latin/Jazz improvised music for guitar and piano. The concert was recorded in June of that year at the Helen Hayes performing arts center in Nyack, NY.

In 2005 John released his first and much anticipated solo album titled, “Suspended Animation” on the Sound Mind Music label. The self-produced album of all instrumental guitar music featured Dave LaRue on bass and Dave DiCenso on drums.

Drummer and re-mixer Tony Verderosa also contributed to the CD and can be heard on the song “Tunnel Vision”. The album was mixed by friend and long time DT producer/mix engineer Kevin Shirley. Many of the songs John debuted live while on tour with G3 would later make up the bulk of the CD.