Call his style New Age, Muzak for Yuppies or just plain easy listening, he is now selling records like a pop star instead of a cult figure. His breakthrough album, "Yanni: Live at the Acropolis," is at 7 million sales worldwide.
And his current month world tour, which brings him to the United Center on Feb. Modestly dubbed "The event of a lifetime," the minute video has become the third biggest-selling home music video of all time after the PBS network began broadcasting it during its fund drives.
In turn, the television exposure introduced Yanni to the kind of broad, generation-spanning audience that has eluded other instrumental pop performers. At the behest of Evans, with whom he recently ended a nine-year relationship, he made a concerted effort to market himself as more than just another faceless purveyor of background music. By putting his swarthy visage in the foreground--on his album covers a rarity for New Age acts, who often favor mood-evoking landscapes , by making appearances on talk shows such as Oprah Winfrey's and, most persuasively, by making the Acropolis video--Yanni became a pop celebrity.
He was no longer just a composer, but a fantasy figure--part Fabio, part pop star--with his own feel-good soundtrack. Yanni--not to be confused with other one-named wonders such as easy-listening pan-flute maestro Zamfir--was born Yanni Chryssomallis 43 years ago in Kalamata, a small town in Greece.
He moved to the United States in to study psychology at the University of Minnesota, and began playing keyboards and writing music for a progressive-rock band called Chameleon. But in the sanctuary of his basement apartment he began composing a type of music that he found more satisfying, one which unself-consciously blended the Eastern rhythms he heard in Greece with bits of rock, pop, jazz and the classics.
He quit Chameleon and began releasing records in this more personal style, first as a solo pianist, then incorporating electronic keyboards and, after a series of best-selling albums on the Private music label, a full orchestra. The eight-minute compositions were too unwieldy for commercial radio stations, so he took his music on the road, where he honed an act that incorporated a classical orchestra, a rock rhythm section, a variety of exotic instruments from around the world from the Australian didgeridoo to the Peruvian charango and his electronic keyboards.
Such ambition has made Yanni arguably the most famous New Age artist of all time. Though he takes pains to distance himself from New Age, an instrumental music associated with a spiritual movement that he describes as "nonsense," his brand of mood music isn't all that different from the instrumental offerings of other New Agers like Andreas Vollenweider, John Tesh and Vangelis.
For all their lushness, his compositions are neither musically complex nor emotionally demanding. They are instead variations on the same message: Don't worry, be happy. At Yanni's Radio City shows, at least half the audience looks young enough to have at least heard a few songs by Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins.
But Yanni's music doesn't seek to batter the senses like the hard rock of those bands. Nor does it demand the extended concentration required of a classical symphony audience, or indulge in the kind of abstract soloing and harmonic daring heard at jazz concerts.
Ruth Eckerd Hall isn't the Acropolis — or the pyramids or the Taj Mahal or Beijing's Forbidden City, all of which Yanni has played since — but it's also not far from Tarpon Springs and its sizeable Greek population, many of whom were there shouting "Yasou! Anything's possible. And I promise you one more thing: I am going to be around for another 25 years.
This is the beginning. I'm just getting warmed up. And what a warm-up it was. For more than two and a half hours, Yanni flitted between a Yamaha grand and an alcove of seven synthesizers, playfully exploring different cultures and styles, often more than once within songs. He'd incorporate a little jazz, a little classical, a little gypsy stomp, a little fiddle and western grandeur, always flicking his fingers in the air — not so much composing as feeling the notes his band played.
Songs became little musicological games: Was this style rooted in East Asia? The Middle East? Central America? With his piece orchestra pulled from all corners of the world, you could hear a little bit of everything — which, he said, was kind of the point. And that is the human race.
Inevitably, some of it sounded sappy and safe, as his critics are wont to complain. A couple of songs got lost in their own romantic sway, the slow crescendo of the piano and orchestra begging to soundtrack a gratuitous sex scene on a beach. But some of it was technically impressive, even at times thrilling. A generous bandleader, Yanni gave almost every player an extended moment in the spotlight.
A passionate solo from violinist Samvel Yervinyan brought a tear to Yanni's eye. He had cellist Alexander Zhiroff rewind and slow down a complex harmonic so the audience could better appreciate what he'd done. Soprano Lauren Jelencovich was radiant on the demanding Nightingale , the show's only song with a vocalist.
And drummer Charlie Adams , who played that night at the Acropolis, tore through a whimsical five-minute drum solo that brought the house down. There is one more titan. One who still walks among us. Like the rest of them, he comes from Greece, or some primordial version of Greece. He has long hair and a huge forehead. A mustache. Beautiful eyes that look like pools of water in an ancient cave.
His name is Yanni. I have heard the concerts were inspiring. One of his most famous records, Live at the Acropolis , was released in While I have never seen the billboard before because this all happened before I was born, I can imagine that it was very beautiful.
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