When Jeffrey Rodman first played the piano he could barely reach the keys and his feet swung freely beneath the bench. He was only four years old when he began to read and write music, his first creative language. It didn't take long for Rodman's parents and piano teacher to see that he had an extraordinary talent; he began playing classical music within a year and was composing preludes by the time he was twelve. 

Born to an electronic engineer father and a musician mother in Manhattan Beach, California, Rodman spent most of his youth either playing or listening to music. Bartok, Bach, and Schumann were among his first influences; later he would discover the Stones, Elton John and the intricate constructions of Ellington and Copland. During his teen years he learned another side of life on a family ranch in Central California, where country music entered his musical vocabulary. Through college, Rodman's boundless energy and passion for music led him to a double major in music and engineering. 

During college Rodman quickly gained fluency in the rhetoric of engineering and later spent time playing gigs around Los Angeles. It wasn't until 1980, when an engineering job sent Rodman and Adrienne, his future wife, to San Francisco, that he started playing solo at local piano bars and cocktail parties. He played wherever and whenever he could. 

Building on 43 years of a life with music, Jeffrey Rodman has created a modern classic with his debut recording, "Rich Inner Life."  Inspired by rhythms and melodies in a wealth of musical styles, he wrote, arranged and produced this delightful, wide-ranging musical adventure. With an engineer's precision, Rodman crafts every song on an unshakable musical foundation while his lyrics unravel the mysteries of modern life and times with a unique directness and simplicity.  If you don't sing along to “Rich Inner Life,” you'll definitely move with it. 

With only one album down, the lifelong musician has many more to come. The release of his highly anticipated second album is expected at the end of 2001. 

But wait!  Jeffrey Rodman Responds!  When the above piece was written, the artist had no idea he was about to be characterized as a precocious bonbon with swinging feet and engineering rhetoric.   Until this can be reworked toward a direction that causes less gorge-rising, I would ask you to accept that Rodman is, instead, a reasonably stable guy who also has a dependence on engineering, an affection for music, and an aversion to loud parties. 

Really.  Let's not let ourselves get overly diverted into wide-ranging musical adventures.