Guitar legend Steve Vai has checked in with a new update:

"Many of you may know that besides playing guitar, I love composing contemporary orchestral music. This was the first thing I started doing musically when I was perhaps 11 years old. Through the years, I’ve composed a lot of music and plan on releasing my orchestral music under the Sound Theories title. Sound Theories Vol I and II and the DVD component Visual Sound Theories with the Metropole orchestra was released on June 26th, 2007. This summer I was planning on recording 4+ hours of other orchestral music I have composed through the years, but due to Covid-19, the sessions are being rescheduled.

I feel tremendously fortunate that some of my orchestral music has caught the attention of classical music aficionados. One such person is Michael Custodis, a music professor and specialist in music of the 19th to the 21st centuries, sociology and aesthetics of music, music and politics, music history of the Nordic countries, and interactions between 'popular' and 'classical’ music courses.

Here is a link to his university page: 

As a musicologist who grew up both in the worlds of classical music and rock, Michael followed my career since Passion And Warfare. When musicology became his profession, he started to collect and write about interferences between orchestral and rock music (Scorpions / Berlin Philharmonics; Metallica / Michael Kamen; Pink Floyd / Michael Kamen; Kip Winger; Jordan Rudess / Dream Theater and some others). Since Visual Sound Theories, Michael knew about my own approach and took the opportunity to get in touch at the 2010 concert in Holland (where 'Still Something Dead in Here' was performed).

Since then, Michael has taken interest in my work, sometimes focusing on my contribution to the history of electric guitar playing, but mostly focusing on my orchestral work in classes at different universities, in conference lectures (the first in 2008 in Cologne before we met) and in publications, some in German, some in English. Here is an interview that we did together regarding my approach to composing. Enjoy!"

Vai recently spoke with The Professor Of Rock about the writing and recording of David Lee Roth’s solo hit, “Yankee Rose”, featured on his 1986 debut, Eat ‘Em And Smile.

Vai explains: “It’s one of those quirky things about my technique. Dave and I really hit it off…there’s something in us that has a similar kind of bend, a bizarre sense of humor.”