Scientists have long said most people display behavior or talents driven by one dominating side of the brain. Left-brainers tend to display deep analytical and technical skills, while right-brainers lean toward being more creative or artistic talents.

If that is the case, famed producer and musician Alan Parsons is a true hybrid — he seems to have that rare gift of being able to tap both sides of his brain with equally inspiring outcomes depending on the situation.

According to his bio, Parsons, who is coming in concert to The Ridgefield Playhouse January 28, seemed genetically destined for a right-brained life, since he was born into a family with an impressive history in entertainment.

His great grandfather was the celebrated actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree. His mother was an actress, professional folk singer and harpist, and his father, Denys Parsons, an accomplished pianist and flautist as well as the author of many books.

The family tree contained other right-brained talents as well, including the late film actor Oliver Reed, who was a cousin; and David Tree, an uncle, who was also a film and stage actor.

Parsons’s early efforts were appropriately creative.

He dabbled with live performance in his late teens as a folk/blues acoustic player and lead guitarist in his hometown of London. Then at 19, he landed a job at Abbey Road Studios and his left-brain skills began dominating his career.

At Abbey Road, he was tapped to help engineer the last two Beatles albums. After he qualified as a fully-fledged recording engineer, he went on to work with Paul McCartney and The Hollies among many others.

But it was his engineering talents on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon that propelled him into the driver’s (or producer’s) seat for Pilot’s Magic, and Al Stewart’s hugely successful Year Of The Cat, as well as two albums with American prog-rock outfit Ambrosia.

In 1975 parsons met Eric Woolfson, who not only became his manager but joined forces with Alan as a songwriting and performing partner for what became The Alan Parsons Project. The APP’s debut album, Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, paved the way for a signing to Clive Davis’s newly launched Arista label and an outpouring of hit albums in quick succession, namely I Robot (1977), Pyramid (1978), The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980), Eye in the Sky (1982), Ammonia Avenue (1984), Vulture Culture (1985), Stereotomy (1986) and Gaudi (1987).

In the ensuing two and a half decades, the 11-time Grammy Award nominee has remained busy exercising both sides of his brain, more recently relocating from London to California, where he now makes his home.

He has continued touring with a dedicated group of cohorts under the Alan Parsons Live Project while writing, recording and producing new material for a handful of newer albums including the 2004 effort, A Valid Path, which reunited him with Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour for the first time since their Dark Side of the Moon sessions.

In 2010, Parsons came full circle, writing and producing a comprehensive instructional video series about recording called The Art & Science Of Sound Recording (ASSR). It features contributions from myriad celebrity artists, engineers and producers and is narrated by Billy Bob Thornton.

Parsons and his Live Project crew consists of P.J. Olsson on vocals, Dan Tracey on guitar and vocals, Manny Foccarazzo on keyboards, Guy Erez on bass, Alastair Greene on guitar, Danny Thompson on Drums, and Todd Cooper on sax, percussion and vocals.

In a recent, exclusive interview with The Newtown Bee, Parsons discussed some of the innovative tricks and methods he invented or helped devise to achieve particular effects on those aforementioned Floyd and Beatles projects, his role in pioneering the musical genre of electronica, the affecting diversity of his own songwriting, and what fans can expect when he hits the stage in Ridgefield on January 28.

Newtown Bee: It seems at least some of your music has some very special healing qualities - do you hear that kind of thing from a lot of folks?

Alan Parsons: I have heard that occasionally, which is very nice. It’s usually a particular song like ‘Time’ for instance. It’s usually the ballads that gives this mysterious healing power to some people. I think it’s rather nice.

Newtown Bee: You’ve worked with celebrated Mexican singer-songwriter Aleks Syntek, ukulele master Jake Shimabukaoro, Yes co-founder Chris Squire and ‘80s hair metal band leader Kip Winger - I'm not sure I could put together a more diverse group of musicians to partner with, except Lady Gaga who I don't think is on your radar, is she?

Alan Parsons: (laughing) Indeed, if I was working with Lay Gaga I suppose I wouldn’t need to work with anyone else, right? I’d have made enough money to retire by now. But I have completed a project with Jake called Grand Ukulele, which came out very well. He is an extraordinary talent, so I hope you’ll look him up. I know Chris Squire for a long time, and we sort of worked together on a project called the ‘Prog Collective’ but we actually worked out of different studio locations so we didn’t collaborate in-person. I did two tracks for that line-up but that project was put together by another Yes guy, Billy Sherwood. Kip has been a lead singer for the Alan parsons Live Project on the road whenever our regular front man P.J. Olsson isn’t available. Kip also created the string arrangements for Jake’s album – he’s a real musician, with formal training. He did a fine job arranging for Jake.

Newtown Bee: Your 2004 project, A Valid Path is described as your first foray into Electronica, and got a Grammy nomination for its unique surround production

Alan Parsons: I still believe 10 years on that surround sound is the way to go – especially with the dismal pace of record sales and the lack of faith in the medium. I wish it would come back, people are going out sinking all kinds of money into surround sound for their home theaters without probably realizing they can play music through it as well.

Newtown Bee: It seems that while you were fusing a lot of the pop influences of The Beatles, with the psychedelic or progressive rock influences of Pink Floyd in your early solo albums, you were also pioneering early Electronica with your integration of early generation synthesizers.

Alan Parsons: Interestingly, I think I Robot had a lot of synths on it, but I’ve always believed that The Alan Parsons Project has been more of a guitar band. There were guitar solos in virtually every song, and guitars were a big part of the sound of the Project, but for some reason I’ve sort of been branded as being – excuse the expression – the Grandfather of Electronica for those early projects. That’s ok, I’m fine with that, but I didn’t really use a lot of synthesizer. I tended to paint colors in the orchestration with synths.

Newtown Bee: Were you doing a lot of your song writing on piano or guitar?

Alan Parsons: The instrumentals tended to come more from keyboards than guitar, with the other songs that incorporated lyrics coming up more on guitar. When I was writing songs, Eric Woolfson was much more a part of the writing process – he would play piano and I would generally play guitar.

Newtown Bee: A Valid Path also teamed you with David Gilmour, was this your first time working with him since Dark Side of the Moon?

Alan Parsons: Absolutely, yes. We had never done anything else together. I was very, very flattered and surprised when he agreed to do it. It turned out very well and it lent a lot of credibility to the album.

Newtown Bee: Speaking of that project, I've always wanted to know who came up with the echo pattern for the vocals on my favorite number, ‘Us & Them’? Do you have any recollection of how the extended overlay of vocal echoes became part of the rhythmic foundation of the track?

Alan Parsons: It’s my recollection that David (Gilmour) said ‘let’s get a repeat echo happening,’ but I can’t remember if the idea had already come up with either Roger (Waters) or David. But what was most challenging for me as an engineer was getting the delay long enough. At that time, there was no tape machine that could produce such a long sequence of echo – I guess those repeats are about one-and-a-half seconds apart. It was a huge technical challenge to make that – we actually used an eight track machine going through two tracks for each repeat. But by using an eight-track machine, we were able to achieve the effect of each repeat coming out of a different speaker in (quadraphonic) separation. I think to that point nobody had actually achieved that effect and that level of delay in music engineering. Incidentally, I also came up with the idea to use that montage of clock and alarm sounds on (Pink Floyd’s) Time. I had already recoded all the clocks, and thought why not use them as part of the song intro.

Newtown Bee: You also produced Al Stewart’s Year of the Cat. Stewart is one among that select group of artists like yourself, who root your songwriting in figures and incidents in literature and history. Do you find it more inspiring to launch off a songwriting platform of established characters and events, versus dreaming them up from exclusively your own experiences?

Alan Parsons: It actually makes it much easier if you already have a subject. If you’re writing a song and you know what the subject is about. I think Al Stewart is the master of historical composition. He’s practically written a song about every major event in history. He’s a great talent and I still believe he is still one of the greatest living songwriters.

Newtown Bee: When you worked with The Beatles, did you learn anything from Sir George Martin or any of the others involved in those projects?

Alan Parsons: There was one thing that Sir George asked us to try to do on one track from the Abby Road album because we had actually run out of tracks on the eight track machine. We literally recorded parts of the orchestra in separate takes, and then we synched them up later in the mix. So with two completely independent tapes running on the mix. The difficulty was keeping them in synch, so we were only able to use very short passages – but that finished piece turned out to be the final few passages to ‘The End’ on Abby Road – that passage that runs under Paul singing about ‘…the love you make.’

Newtown Bee: Your son, Jeremy has also contributed to your work, what is the dynamic like when you bring such a beloved and close family member into the 'work zone'?

Alan Parsons: He’s less active as a musician these days – he’s involved in another area of audio. But he’s very savvy with computers and he was doing a lot with electronic music back then. I’d already moved to America and he was still living in London. So it was nice to work with him when he came to see me for sort of an extended visit.

Newtown Bee: What will folks be seeing when you make your way to The Ridgefield Playhouse in a couple of weeks?

Alan Parsons: It’s a hits show. We concentrate on playing the songs folks want to here. And there will be one new song called ‘Fragile.’ And we may have another new single by the time we get to Connecticut, so you may get to hear that one as well.

Newtown Bee: Anything on the near or distant horizon that you want your fans to be aware of beyond the current tour?

Alan Parsons: I’m about to begin working with an Israeli artist Aviv Geffen who is a big star in his country. So I’ll be heading out to Tel Aviv to work with him – maybe get together and write a song or two before I settle in to produce his new album.

Check out a video of Alan Parsons Live Project performing Sirius Eye in the Sky - Live in Madrid

See Alan Parsons performs his hit ballad 'Time' from I Robot.

For tickets to the show, visit ridgefieldplayhouse.org.