Rich had matured into one of the UK’s most gifted jazz fusion keyboardists and composers by his early twenties, with a reputation built not on hype but on an unmistakable musical intelligence and an ability to bridge genres.
In 2015, when Wales Online described Jordan Rich as the “Cardiff keyboard wizard,” the recognition wasn’t just for a promising up-and-comer—but for a 22-year-old who had made waves far beyond his native Wales, writes Jenny Ashcroft. Born in 1993, Rich had matured into one of the UK’s most gifted jazz fusion keyboardists and composers by his early twenties, with a reputation built not on hype but on an unmistakable musical intelligence and an ability to bridge genres. His early years in Cardiff were marked by a deep engagement with harmonies and improvisation; jazz, in particular, served as both a language and a set of questions to explore. “Jazz was never about showing off for me,” Rich explains. “It was more about asking where the music could go, and who it could bring together.”
By the time he left Wales as a teenager and moved to Dubai, Rich was already regarded as a rare talent—one whose work would soon capture international attention.
In the UAE’s cosmopolitan swirl, opportunities to create and innovate abounded for such a talented young musician—from producing improvisation-rich music therapy workshops with the Special Needs Awareness Program, to creating performance spaces for musicians from every background. It was this same drive that propelled him beyond the concert stage and into the realm of festival leadership. A star performer, he took by force the Party in the Park JESS Music Festival—an annual event held in the Arabian Ranches community of Dubai, which donates all profits to the JESS Vietnam Project charity, supporting the refurbishment of medical centers in Northern Vietnam and the Thien Phuoc Centre for the disadvantaged. Drawing over 2,000 attendees and featuring acts such as the Dubai Chamber Choir and the legendary Dubai Drums, Rich did far more than anchor sets. He performed a dazzling solo jazz piano medley of Ray Charles, debuted original compositions, and reimagined The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” for full band and string section. For Rich, it wasn’t just youthful bravado; even then, peers and mentors pointed to something subtler at play—a capacity to hear new color and emotional depth in every ensemble.
Beyond the stage, Rich’s impact extended to radio, where he co-presented a successful weekly arts review segment on Dubai-Eye, the city’s only award-winning national talk radio station.
“That period was formative in every way,” Rich shares. “I really started seeing music more as a conversation—a way of putting myself in dialogue with every listener.”
As lead keyboardist for the acclaimed British band Covey, Rich played showcases at Gallery 263 and T.T. the Bear’s Place, both vital outposts in Boston’s fiercely competitive scene. But the real inflection point came in 2014, on a night at the Boston Globe-acclaimed Red Room, where Covey and Rich shared the bill with Hozier—the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter riding high on his BBC-winning hit “Take Me To Church.”
The show sold out—fast. “There’s an energy you can’t replicate when you play rooms like that,” says Rich, who delivered a set that spanned classic keyboard voicings and modern jazz phrasing, meeting the moment with equal parts discipline and improvisation. His unique touch gave Covey’s sound both drive and subtlety—an ability to shift from intimate to epic and back, always searching for that ‘in-between’ note or texture.
It was a period of endless experimentation and powerful artistic collaborations for the innovative Welsh virtuoso. When Dutch kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen’s celebrated Strandbeests landed at the exquisite Peabody Essex Museum, Rich was tapped—with his band I/O—to star at the grand opening event. For a sold-out crowd, and with press from The New Yorker to Architectural Digest covering every detail, Rich’s role was a creator of atmosphere. “There was a freedom to the entire concept—mapping polyrhythms and jazz harmonies onto mechanical movement,” he recalls. “I admired those Strandbeests: part engineering, part poetry. Our job was to make the room breathe in sync with them.”
The result was more soundscape than song, blending panoramic keyboard runs, ambient washes, and displaced jazz rhythms—a testament both to his technical facility and his instincts as an accompanist for visual art. It’s not every day a music director is asked to render wind-powered sculptures into melody, but for Rich, this was familiar ground: “Art and jazz share invention—and neither settles for easy answers.”
Plastic Waves would storm the revered and groundbreaking South by Southwest stage in Austin, TX next, joining one of the largest and most prestigious music festivals in the world. “The aim wasn’t to dazzle with pyrotechnics. It was to find the intersection between improvisation and electronic music—where a jazz voicing or a reharmonized chord would shift the whole mood,” says Rich. The band’s fusion of alt energy and jazz inflection became a calling card, with Rich at the production and instrumental helm.
Looking ahead, anticipation is building for Plastic Waves’ headline concert at Boston’s legendary The Middle East in 2026—a club hailed by Rolling Stone as one of America’s top 20 venues and praised by The Guardian as one of Boston’s top 10 live music spaces. Boston Magazine has honored The Middle East as “Best Rock Club” and describes it as “the city’s best place to catch both rising stars and established legends.” For Jordan Rich, returning to this stage with Plastic Waves signals a high-profile artistic milestone—an affirmation of his creative vision and the band’s reputation for innovation, all set within one of the most revered spaces for cutting-edge music in the country.
His journey began with leading composer roles at field-defining companies such as Gratitude Sound LLC—an award-winning Boston-based firm with honors including Hatch, Clio Music, and Boston Music Awards. Rich’s standout composition for the Museum of Science in Boston set the tone for projects that blended sophistication with broad appeal.
Next came a leadership role at the world-renowned Finger Music & Sound Design Inc. There, he was responsible for music and audio for high-profile global campaigns, producing award-winning tracks for blue-chip brands such as Nike, American Express, Audi, Burger King, Canon, and more. Notably, Rich served as Lead Composer and Production Leader-Coordinator, helming the audio for several major advertising initiatives while his own stylistic agility surfaced in standout projects such as the Estee Lauder commercial starring Danielle Lauder, which channeled the big-band jazz sophistication of Henry Mancini—“a chance to revisit jazz roots but push it through a high-gloss lens, pure old Hollywood but with my own fingerprints,” he says.
By the time he joined Yessian Music—founded in 1971 and still a top creative music house for clients including Disney, Coca-Cola, Sony, NBC—Rich had become a creative force in the advertising industry. A new lead composer and creative director, he develops commercial music for campaigns that spanned BMW, Jeep (notably collaborating on a memorable spot with Yankees great Derek Jeter), US Cellular, and dozens more.
Even in the compressed timeframes of advertising, Rich’s signature emerges: harmonic sophistication, unexpected textures, jazz-tinged grooves, and that sense of rhythmic unpredictability. His work for Mercedes-Benz during The Masters, in particular, became an example of what happens when jazz discipline, inventive sound design, and brand storytelling converge.
Overseeing teams of composers and producers at Yessian, leading scores for the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta, Disneyland Hong Kong’s 20th Anniversary Celebration, T-Mobile’s Executive Business Center, Google Pixel Japan, Frito-Lay, OnStar, Norton VPN—Rich deals with the very definition of high-stakes contemporary brand music. Supervising, mixing, and mapping projects from initial idea to final master, Rich sees commercial music composition as “jazz in miniature: you’re handed a structure and your job is to subvert it just enough to stand out, without losing sight of the message.”
Recognition for this approach has been abundant, earning him an invitation to serve on the Telly Awards judging council, and a contract extension with Yessian through 2029. His influence in the field now sets the standard for creative music leadership within global advertising.
With every project, Jordan Rich continues to redefine what it means to be a contemporary musician—and the world, quite rightly, is listening attentively.
By the time he left Wales as a teenager and moved to Dubai, Rich was already regarded as a rare talent—one whose work would soon capture international attention.
In the UAE’s cosmopolitan swirl, opportunities to create and innovate abounded for such a talented young musician—from producing improvisation-rich music therapy workshops with the Special Needs Awareness Program, to creating performance spaces for musicians from every background. It was this same drive that propelled him beyond the concert stage and into the realm of festival leadership. A star performer, he took by force the Party in the Park JESS Music Festival—an annual event held in the Arabian Ranches community of Dubai, which donates all profits to the JESS Vietnam Project charity, supporting the refurbishment of medical centers in Northern Vietnam and the Thien Phuoc Centre for the disadvantaged. Drawing over 2,000 attendees and featuring acts such as the Dubai Chamber Choir and the legendary Dubai Drums, Rich did far more than anchor sets. He performed a dazzling solo jazz piano medley of Ray Charles, debuted original compositions, and reimagined The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” for full band and string section. For Rich, it wasn’t just youthful bravado; even then, peers and mentors pointed to something subtler at play—a capacity to hear new color and emotional depth in every ensemble.
Beyond the stage, Rich’s impact extended to radio, where he co-presented a successful weekly arts review segment on Dubai-Eye, the city’s only award-winning national talk radio station.
“That period was formative in every way,” Rich shares. “I really started seeing music more as a conversation—a way of putting myself in dialogue with every listener.”
Boston, Berklee, and Bands Without Borders
The combination of artistic agility and purpose-driven leadership signaled a trajectory that would soon extend far past Dubai. The next step was Boston, where Rich got a merit scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music. The studies would refine his command of jazz and composition, while opening new avenues across America’s most restless creative scenes. He graduated with high honors, but more important was the network of collaborators he built—a group that would define his next decade.As lead keyboardist for the acclaimed British band Covey, Rich played showcases at Gallery 263 and T.T. the Bear’s Place, both vital outposts in Boston’s fiercely competitive scene. But the real inflection point came in 2014, on a night at the Boston Globe-acclaimed Red Room, where Covey and Rich shared the bill with Hozier—the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter riding high on his BBC-winning hit “Take Me To Church.”
The show sold out—fast. “There’s an energy you can’t replicate when you play rooms like that,” says Rich, who delivered a set that spanned classic keyboard voicings and modern jazz phrasing, meeting the moment with equal parts discipline and improvisation. His unique touch gave Covey’s sound both drive and subtlety—an ability to shift from intimate to epic and back, always searching for that ‘in-between’ note or texture.
It was a period of endless experimentation and powerful artistic collaborations for the innovative Welsh virtuoso. When Dutch kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen’s celebrated Strandbeests landed at the exquisite Peabody Essex Museum, Rich was tapped—with his band I/O—to star at the grand opening event. For a sold-out crowd, and with press from The New Yorker to Architectural Digest covering every detail, Rich’s role was a creator of atmosphere. “There was a freedom to the entire concept—mapping polyrhythms and jazz harmonies onto mechanical movement,” he recalls. “I admired those Strandbeests: part engineering, part poetry. Our job was to make the room breathe in sync with them.”
The result was more soundscape than song, blending panoramic keyboard runs, ambient washes, and displaced jazz rhythms—a testament both to his technical facility and his instincts as an accompanist for visual art. It’s not every day a music director is asked to render wind-powered sculptures into melody, but for Rich, this was familiar ground: “Art and jazz share invention—and neither settles for easy answers.”
Beyond the Stage: Leading Plastic Waves Into the Spotlight
One of Rich’s most fruitful artistic alliances came with an offer to join—as lead keyboardist and music producer—Plastic Waves, a band whose shimmering synths and fearless arrangements found their way to some of the contemporary music world’s key festivals. Northside Festival in Brooklyn—a perennial in “must-see” lists from Billboard to Rolling Stone—marked a turning point: their set, led and shaped by Rich’s signature keyboard sound, earned accolades for fusing “psychedelic rock with glistening synth lines.”Plastic Waves would storm the revered and groundbreaking South by Southwest stage in Austin, TX next, joining one of the largest and most prestigious music festivals in the world. “The aim wasn’t to dazzle with pyrotechnics. It was to find the intersection between improvisation and electronic music—where a jazz voicing or a reharmonized chord would shift the whole mood,” says Rich. The band’s fusion of alt energy and jazz inflection became a calling card, with Rich at the production and instrumental helm.
Looking ahead, anticipation is building for Plastic Waves’ headline concert at Boston’s legendary The Middle East in 2026—a club hailed by Rolling Stone as one of America’s top 20 venues and praised by The Guardian as one of Boston’s top 10 live music spaces. Boston Magazine has honored The Middle East as “Best Rock Club” and describes it as “the city’s best place to catch both rising stars and established legends.” For Jordan Rich, returning to this stage with Plastic Waves signals a high-profile artistic milestone—an affirmation of his creative vision and the band’s reputation for innovation, all set within one of the most revered spaces for cutting-edge music in the country.
Advertising as Performance: The Artistry Behind the Campaigns
Equally pivotal to Rich’s career has been his ongoing work as a composer and creative director in the world of advertising—a world where his rise has been nothing short of remarkable. Over the past fifteen years, Rich has become one of the most renowned, respected, and in-demand composers and music producers in the international advertising industry.His journey began with leading composer roles at field-defining companies such as Gratitude Sound LLC—an award-winning Boston-based firm with honors including Hatch, Clio Music, and Boston Music Awards. Rich’s standout composition for the Museum of Science in Boston set the tone for projects that blended sophistication with broad appeal.
Next came a leadership role at the world-renowned Finger Music & Sound Design Inc. There, he was responsible for music and audio for high-profile global campaigns, producing award-winning tracks for blue-chip brands such as Nike, American Express, Audi, Burger King, Canon, and more. Notably, Rich served as Lead Composer and Production Leader-Coordinator, helming the audio for several major advertising initiatives while his own stylistic agility surfaced in standout projects such as the Estee Lauder commercial starring Danielle Lauder, which channeled the big-band jazz sophistication of Henry Mancini—“a chance to revisit jazz roots but push it through a high-gloss lens, pure old Hollywood but with my own fingerprints,” he says.
By the time he joined Yessian Music—founded in 1971 and still a top creative music house for clients including Disney, Coca-Cola, Sony, NBC—Rich had become a creative force in the advertising industry. A new lead composer and creative director, he develops commercial music for campaigns that spanned BMW, Jeep (notably collaborating on a memorable spot with Yankees great Derek Jeter), US Cellular, and dozens more.
Even in the compressed timeframes of advertising, Rich’s signature emerges: harmonic sophistication, unexpected textures, jazz-tinged grooves, and that sense of rhythmic unpredictability. His work for Mercedes-Benz during The Masters, in particular, became an example of what happens when jazz discipline, inventive sound design, and brand storytelling converge.
Overseeing teams of composers and producers at Yessian, leading scores for the Delta Flight Museum in Atlanta, Disneyland Hong Kong’s 20th Anniversary Celebration, T-Mobile’s Executive Business Center, Google Pixel Japan, Frito-Lay, OnStar, Norton VPN—Rich deals with the very definition of high-stakes contemporary brand music. Supervising, mixing, and mapping projects from initial idea to final master, Rich sees commercial music composition as “jazz in miniature: you’re handed a structure and your job is to subvert it just enough to stand out, without losing sight of the message.”
Recognition for this approach has been abundant, earning him an invitation to serve on the Telly Awards judging council, and a contract extension with Yessian through 2029. His influence in the field now sets the standard for creative music leadership within global advertising.
The Rich Effect
As the ink dries on his latest score, Jordan Rich shows no signs of slowing. Whether working with Plastic Waves, shaping the next wave of commercial audio at Yessian, or headlining venues acclaimed by Rolling Stone and The Guardian, he demonstrates what can happen when a composer refuses limitation. From Cardiff to Dubai, Boston to Brooklyn, and across the ever-evolving world of modern music, Rich’s story is one of transformation—of never quite staying in one place, always moving just ahead of the curve.With every project, Jordan Rich continues to redefine what it means to be a contemporary musician—and the world, quite rightly, is listening attentively.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
