Giánnis Chrysomállis
popularly known as YANNI
| Born | November 14, 1954 [1] |
|---|---|
| Origin | Kalamata, Greece |
| Genres | Contemporary instrumental,[1][2] instrumental,[3] crossover,[4] world, new-age (disavowed by artist)[3][5][6] |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, pianist, music producer |
| Instruments | Piano, keyboards |
| Years active | 1980–present |
| Labels | Private Music/Windham Hill/BMG Virgin/EMI Image Entertainment Yanni Wake/Disney Pearl Series |
| Associated acts | Chameleon, Shahrdad Rohani |
| Website | Official Website Yiannis Chryssomallis[7] (Greek: Γιάννης Χρυσομάλλης, Giánnis Chrysomállis; born November 14, 1954), known professionally as Yanni (/ˈjɑːni/ YAH-nee), is a Greek composer, keyboardist, pianist, and music producer who has spent his adult life in the United States. Yanni continues to use the musical shorthand that he developed as a child,[8][9] blending jazz, classical, soft rock, and world music[4] to create predominantly instrumental works.[10] Although this genre of music was not well suited for commercial pop radio and music television,[3][11] Yanni received international recognition by producing concerts at historic monuments and by producing videos that were broadcast on public television.[11] His breakthrough concert, Live at the Acropolis, yielded the second best-selling music concert video of all time.[12][13][14] Additional historic sites for Yanni's concerts have included India's Taj Mahal, China's Forbidden City, the United Arab Emirates' Burj Khalifa,[15] Russia's Kremlin,[16] Puerto Rico's El Morro castle,[17] Lebanon's ancient city of Byblos,[18] Tunisia's Roman Theatre of Carthage,[19] India's Laxmi Vilas Palace,[20] and the Egyptian pyramids and Great Sphinx of Giza.[21][22] At least fourteen of Yanni's albums have peaked at No. 1 in Billboard's "Top New Age Album" category,[23] and two albums (Dare to Dream and In My Time) received Grammy Award nominations.[14] Yanni has performed in more than 30 countries on five continents,[24] and through late 2015 Yanni had performed live in concert before more than 5 million people and had accumulated more than 40 platinum and gold albums globally, with sales totaling over 25 million copies.[25][26] A longtime fundraiser for public television,[2][27] Yanni's compositions have been used on commercial television programs, especially for sporting events.[14][28][29] He has written film scores and the music for an award-winning British Airways television commercial.[28] Yanni popularized the combination of electronic music synthesizers with a full scale symphony orchestra.[30] He has employed musicians of various nationalities and has incorporated a variety of exotic instruments[4] to create music that has been called an eclectic fusion of ethnic sounds.[8] Influenced by his encounters with cultures around the world,[27][31] Yanni has been called a "true global artist"[30] and his music is said to reflect his “one world, one people” philosophy.[27] |
Early life
Yanni was born November 14, 1954 in Kalamata, Greece,[1] the son of a banker[32] and homemaker.[citation needed] He displayed musical talent at a young age, playing piano at the age of 6.[1] His parents encouraged him to learn at his own pace and in his own way, without formal music training.[1] The self-taught musician continues to use the "musical shorthand" that he developed as a child, rather than employing traditional musical notation.[8][9]Yanni set a Greek national record in the 50-meter freestyle swimming competition at age 14.[14][33]
In November 1972, Yanni moved from Greece to the United States to attend the University of Minnesota beginning in January 1973, majoring in psychology.[1] For a time he earned money by washing dishes at the student union.[34] Yanni later explained that learning English forced him to read each paragraph several times in what he called a slow and frustrating process, but which helped him memorize the material and do well on tests.[34] He received a B.A. degree in psychology in 1976.[14]
During his time as a student, Yanni played in a local rock band and continued to study piano and other keyboard instruments.[1] Upon graduating, when he dedicated himself exclusively to music for one full year and found he was the happiest he had ever been, he said he decided music would be his life's work.[34]
Music career
In 1977 Yanni joined the Minneapolis-based rock group Chameleon, performing with its founder, drummer Charlie Adams[1][35] with whom he would work into the 2010s.[36] While in Minneapolis, Yanni also worked with choreographer Loyce Houlton to provide music for dance works produced by the Minnesota Dance Theatre.[citation needed] After touring with Chameleon from 1980 to 1984,[36] Yanni moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of movie soundtrack work.[14][37]1980s to early 1990s: Emergence and recognition
In 1980 Yanni recorded his first album Optimystique, which Atlantic Records re-released in 1984 and Private Music re-released in 1989.[1][28]Yanni formed a band in 1987 and began to tour in 1988 with an ensemble including pianist/singer John Tesh and drummer Charlie Adams, promoting his early albums Keys to Imagination, Out of Silence, and Chameleon Days.[14][28] A highlight of the tour was a performance with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra that elicited a positive review, considered seminal to Yanni's public recognition, from a Dallas Times Herald critic.[28] Yanni's emergence was said to be "timed perfectly" with the growing popularity of contemporary instrumental music.[28] In this time frame, Yanni wrote motion picture soundtracks for Steal the Sky (1988), Heart of Midnight (1988), I Love You Perfect (1989), She'll Take Romance (1990), When You Remember Me (1990), Children of the Bride (1990), and Hua qi Shao Lin (1994).[38]
Dare to Dream, released in 1992, was Yanni’s first Grammy-nominated[14] album. It included "Aria," a song based on Léo Delibes' The Flower Duet (Lakmé, 1883) and popularized by an award-winning[28] British Airways commercial. A second Grammy-nominated[14] album, In My Time, followed in 1993.
1990s: Acropolis, world concerts, exhaustion and renewal
 |
From Live at the Acropolis (1994):
At the 1993 Acropolis
concert, Yanni dedicated "Nostalgia" to the people of his homeland
Greece, where he had not lived since 1972.
|
| Problems playing this file? See media help. | |
Without financial backing, Yanni risked $2 million of his personal fortune in the Acropolis production[4] in a strategy to boost his artistic profile and open new markets for his music.[8] The resulting video was broadcast on PBS and became one of its most popular programs ever, seen in 65 countries by half a billion people.[14][44] It became the second best-selling music concert video of all time (after Michael Jackson's Thriller[13]), selling more than 7 million copies worldwide.[12][14]
In March 1997, Yanni became one of the few Western artists permitted to perform and record at the Taj Mahal in India.[45] Yanni followed in May 1997 with performances at the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, becoming the first Western artist in modern times permitted to perform at the historic site.[45] These two events formed the live album and video, Tribute, released in November 1997.[45]
After negotiating the demands of gaining permission to perform at the Taj Mahal and Forbidden City in 1997, breaking up with Linda Evans in early 1998, and completing a long world tour later in 1998, Yanni halted his music career.[11][46] Yanni later related that he had become depressed, and returned to Greece to live with his parents for three months before traveling the world.[11] He didn't do an interview for two years, later explaining, "I traveled. I wanted to see other people's ideas of life, get out of the American dream."[11]
2000s to 2010: After a hiatus, new perspectives
In 2000, after the two-year hiatus, Yanni released If I Could Tell You, his first studio album in seven years. The album sold 55,000 copies in its first week and landed at No. 20 on the Billboard charts, his highest debut to date.[11] Yanni described the album as more of an even-tempered "listening" album, less dramatic than the live concert albums Live at the Acropolis or Tribute.[47] He explained that he himself created all of the album's sounds, including apparent vocalizations, through the manipulation of sound in his studio.[47]The music in Yanni's 2003 album Ethnicity represented many of the world's cultures, Yanni saying it uses ethnicity to reflect the color and beauty of a multicultural society.[48] The album was released near the publication date of Yanni's autobiography, Yanni in Words.[48] On October 23, 2003, Yanni performed a keyboard instrumental version of The Star-Spangled Banner before Game 5 of the 2003 World Series.[49]
For the first time in his career, Yanni brought vocalists to the forefront in the Ric Wake collaboration Yanni Voices, the artist's first studio album in six years.[50] PBS broadcast video of a November 2008 Voices Acapulco concert weeks before the album's March 24, 2009 release by Walt Disney Records' Disney Pearl Imprint, the album release preceding a tour produced by Pearl's Buena Vista Concerts division.[50]
The album Mexicanisimo, released in November of Mexico's bicentennial year 2010, was a tribute to that country through Yanni's collaborative interpretation of its folk music.[51] It involved collaboration with singer-songwriter Pepe Aguilar and singer-actress Lucero.[51]
