June 22, 2012
Posted by
John J. Moser
at 01:19:00 AM on June 22, 2012
In the 1990s, it seemed world-music artist Yanni could do no wrong.
He sold more than 10 million copies of his albums in that decade. The DVD accompanying his 1994 disc “Yanni Live at the Acropolis” sold 6 million, making it the second-best-selling music video of all time.
His 1992 album “Dare to Dream” and 1993’s “In My Time” were nominated for Grammy Awards.
Yanni
More than a decade after his last gold album, 2000’s “If I Could Tell You,” Yanni’s orchestral new age composition music is no longer the same phenomenon.
There clearly is still a broad audience for his music -- his 2009 “Yanni Voices” was the No. 2 best-selling New Age album that year, and “Truth of Touch” was the genre’s best-selling disc of 2011. But his albums since have sold more modestly, and his current tour, for example, has him playing smaller theaters.
Before he stops at Easton’s State Theatre on June 27, Yanni spoke in a telephone news conference.
Here’s an edited conference of the call:
A native of Greece, Yanni came to America in 1972, at age 18, to attend college. With no musical background and not even able to read music, he moved to Los Angeles after college to pursue movie soundtrack work. He put together a band that included musician/TV personality John Tesh.
Yanni released five albums of instrumental music, but it wasn’t until 1990’s “Reflection of Passion” that he made that connection with listeners. The disc went double platinum and took him on a tour that included stops at Allentown Symphony Hall in 1991 and 1992.
The follow-up “Dare to Dream” in 1992 found an even broader audience. Its song “Aria” was featured in an award-winning British Airways commercial. Suddenly, Yanni’s music was being used for the Super Bowl, the Olympics and even ABC News.
“Live at the Acropolis” was his first live album. A PBS television broadcast of the concert became one of its most popular programs ever.
Your music has so many songs that are devoted to places. “Santorini” is an excellent example. Talk a little bit about the sense of place and how that relates to your music.
YANNI:
“That’s an excellent question. One of the nicest things about my career has been that it has allowed me the opportunity to travel all over the world and go into places where most people wouldn’t be able to get in. I had come in contact with so many cultures. And it’s been going on for quite a lot of years. So that changes a human being. It opens your mind. The lessons are myriad when you come in contact with so many cultures.
“That, in turn, changes you as a human being. And when you change me, then you change my arts. And you change what I’m going to be talking about, what I’m going to be interested in talking about. So I could talk forever on this subject. But it’s a very different aspect of music creation, or even if I was writing books or if I was a painter or any type of art.”
Your concerts that I see on TV are huge outside venues. How do you think it’ll be different for a smaller venue for your music and your audience?
“That’s another excellent question. I love both. I’ve done venues with the tens of thousands of people. And I’ve done venues with 2,000 people, maybe even less, 1,700 probably the smallest. You know, when you’re going through a smaller venue, the concert changes. You can touch the audience. It’s like you’re here in your living room all of a sudden with a bunch of your friends and you’re talking to them. So I find myself when I do a concert in the smaller venue, I’m enjoying it a lot because I get to hear everything everybody says, or sometimes I engage them in a conversation and we start talking. They ask me questions. I start talking back.
“I don’t know what that’s got to do with music, but it’s, again, a relationship that is developed between and the audience. And I love both, playing in big venues like we just went to China and played at the Olympics Stadium there. You know, that’s magnificent, too. When you’re in Guangzhou for example, we had six or eight screens. So it’s just gigantic. Everything about it is gigantic. I don’t know if you know anything about Guangzhou, but Guangzhou is the light capital of the world. That’s where all the LEDs pretty much are manufactured. So they gave it to us.
“They let you do you want; take as many lights as you like. So you can go all the way from that to a place with 1,500 people, 1,700 people. And I love both. I will perform as strongly for 300 people as I would do for 300,000 people. It makes no different to me. Once I get on that stage, I’m on. And I’m on 100 percent. There’s no 99 percent or ‘I don’t feel good today’ or any of that stuff. It’s just you’re on, you’re on. That’s it.”
For the 2012 North America tour, you’re featuring songs from your “Truth of Touch” album which you’ve mentioned has a little bit of a edginess. What do you like best about -the edginess and how do you give it that edge?
“Well, it’s a lot of fun, you know. It’s live. It’s not like being at home in your living room listening to your stereo. You know, a live concert is exactly that. There’s an interaction. There’s an unpredictability. You are never in control for the live concerts. No single concert that I have ever given in my life has been the same. It starts different; the middle is different. Mostly the ending ends the same. But it’s how we get there. Like I had numerous discussions with people about that particular subject. How we get there is a different road every time -- the events, what country you’re in, what state you’re in, what, you know, what the mood is of the audience, what time of the year it is, all of that.
“Now what does that have to do with the edginess in the concerts? Well, I’d like to kick some butt, if I - am I allowed to use the word “butt”? When I’m on stage, there are times -- it’s like life. And a concert is like life. It’s not all just beauty or just edginess. It’s both and everything in between. So I try to take the audience through a journey if I can. The journey lasts a couple of hours, so a significant amount of time to keep people’s attention. And we do very well from what I’ve seen playing around the world. And I’m grateful for that.
“I think my concerts have become edgier now than they’ve ever been in the past, I think, (just to be fair) with your question. I just tend to get a little heavier. Well, not a lot, but in some areas, you know, like pulling all this stuff helps.”
You have a new project that’s about to hit -- Live at El Morro, recorded in Puerto Rico over two nights. When you think back to those two nights in which you recorded this project, those two nights in December, what kind of memories do you have?
“Oh man, I could talk for hours and days of that. But I don’t know if you know the whole story. This concert is something that I’ve been talking about doing for 20 years, you know. I’ve been going to Puerto Rico for years and years. We have a lot of friends there. And one of my managers owns a house in a little island right next to Puerto Rico. So we used to go over there a lot. And every time I was there, the Puerto Rican people say, ‘When are you going to play El Morro? Come on. You can play El Morro. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.’ Well, we just decided to do it last year. It took a year into planning anyway. But I get there; guess what’s going on? It’s raining every day for 25 days in a row. Yes, it’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. The rain is our biggest enemy, followed by winds. And now we’re on a cliff on a beautiful -- I mean Puerto Rico is a gorgeous island. And it’s big. And people don’t realize how big this island is. Anyway, but the place, the location is fantastic and beautiful as it was because it’s - with this castle overlooking the ocean. I mean you’re right there on a cliff. It’s just awesome looking.
“Well, on Friday night, we have planned three nights for the concerts -- Friday, Saturday and Sunday in case of rain of course. On Friday, we managed to go through three quarters of the show and then we had to stop. It was the first time in 30 years of my career that I’ve been stopped. And that really hurt. It hurt us. You know, the audience is fantastic. The audience didn’t want their money back. They were - they just, I can’t even explain. So Saturday night, the next night, we got very lucky. It was the only day it didn’t rain. So we were able to capture the concert. I remember flying out to Puerto Rico Sunday at 6 o’clock with my manager and we had looked out the window and my manager said ‘Look at El Morro; it’s raining.’
“So I couldn’t have done it. It was one day out of the whole month, on a Saturday night. Somebody was looking over us, that one night. And it shows. You can imagine the heartache that we went through. And I’m surrounded with some of the most amazing engineers and producers and videographers. I got 35 cameras lined up and three camera operator - it’s not a camera operator; it is cinematographer himself. And we shot the concert with an attitude of almost like, I don’t want to say a football game, but we went inside. I wanted people to feel - to be up stage with us. I wanted them to get that close. And get really, really inside the whole workings. And what obviously - Mother Nature, being historical as it is, gave us an edge. There is nothing, you know, the uncertainty that we were all faced. We all were facing our demons, insecurities -- will it rain, will it not rain, is the wind going to pick up enough so where we can’t play anymore, are we endangering people in any way; a million questions, and I’m responsible for all of them. I’m in charge. If anything goes wrong, it’s my fault. So we were very lucky. And the project I think is phenomenal. The video speaks for itself. There is not a video that I have ever made that even remotely resembles to this one. It does have an edge, like we talked earlier. But this may be edgier video, but it also has a lot of beauty.”
I must say having seen the DVD, I’ve never seen you - your smile so broad. It seemed like you’re in a great place right now. I want to ask you a little bit about your music. You know, trends come and trends go. I remember looking at an interview with you not too long ago. We’ve talked about coming out of college and being in a rock band and, you know, kind of rock music sort of waning and there’s different trends that come along. But your music seems to kind of defy trends and is - if I was going to describe it -- and maybe you can say if it’s a fair statement or not -- it feels like it’s music for all time. Is that intentional - I mean did you intentionally do that when you write? Do you look at something that’s going to last forever as opposed to something that’s just going to sell 1 million copies right away?
“Thank you very much for everything you just said. I’m touched. There’s no way you can create art to last forever. I think it’s every artist’s dream to create things that last, whether they last a month, a year, five years, 10 years, especially with music for God’s sakes, you know. Music is very disposable nowadays. A lot of the pop artists, they’re lucky if they last more than five years. And then you look at something like the Parthenon and it’s there for 2,500 years. And you’re saying to yourself, how could I possibly, little old me, come up with anything that anyone would ever want to listen to 10, 15 years from now or let alone, you know, 10 months from now.
“So you can’t have that in your mind. So what you can have in your mind is what’s in your heart, what’s in your soul, what’s your understanding about life, your depths of understanding. Open your mind. Come in contact with cultures. That’s why I travel so much; to learn, you know? And especially keep your mind open because there are no rules in music. Study by listening. I’ve never heard a teacher. I’m a self-taught musician. But I don’t think I didn’t study. I listened to everything I could. Even when I was 8 years old, I used to listen to Bach. Now why would an 8-year-old kid like Bach? You tell me. I don’t know. But I loved it.
“So I’ve been exposed with enormous amount of music. And I think that I don’t try to combine my knowledge of music or what exposures of instruments I have had over the years. When I try to express an emotion and express - or to talk because I talk with notes, when I try to talk to my audience, then all of this experience is just primordial soup that it kind of comes together and it shows itself and it appears. And it’s fluid. It’s effortless. I’m going to mix a classical instrument piece together with some rock and roll, and then I’m going to throw some jazz in there and then some Middle Eastern chords and then, oops, I come up with Frankenstein. It has to come from the truth. It has to come when you’re completely open and you’re surrendered and then, for lack of a better word, your own soul speaks.”
“I look down on my concerts a lot of times and I see, you know, 6-year-old kids, sitting right next to grandma. And I don’t know who brought whom to the concert. And maybe they’re both there and they both love it. And I’ve heard fourth generation people telling me that they love the music. They comprehend it. They understand it. It’s healing to them. And somehow it connects with them. I love that. You can’t give me a higher complement.”
You were just talking about Bach. Do you have other influences within your composing? I mean either jazz or even pop or even like just, you know, the classical side as well? I mean when you’re composing and when you’re thinking about a piece, I mean...
“Yes, I have influences from everywhere. When I grew up in Greece, you know, I was listening shortwave radio because we didn’t have a turntable or a tape recorder at home. So I couldn’t just buy records and listen like other kids. And so at night, I would stay up and listen to shortwave radio. So I would hear Italian and North African music. And even German stations would come through, and stations that I didn’t understand the language, you know, from all over. In the Mediterranean, you have to understand how we grew up out of Greece. So I had access to a lot of different types of music.
“My parents loved classical music. So I was exposed to classical music very early. And I love Beethoven. That’s my favorite. And then Chopin is No. 2 for me. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Mozart or the rest of them. It’s the two of my favorites. And Bach of course. I would like all of this music. I even like - I love -- rock and roll when I was growing up, English rock and roll in particular. And I like Zeppelin and the People and even Black Sabbath. You know, it doesn’t matter. It’s just that it was at a moment in time and my soul needed a certain type of sounds to express itself.”
I’m even thinking like even movie soundtracks. I mean there are things like Terry Goldsmith compose that, you know, things like either for film or television, or even just other composers that, you know that maybe influenced your compositions.
“Excellent. You think you’re on something that nobody else has ever done. It’s absolutely truth. It’s, you know, even I am get a goose bump thinking about it. The most influence I’ve ever had from music was doing movies. … And the movies, you would get goose bumps and you get the emotional reaction. And it was mostly instrumental music. Yes, Terry Goldsmith I love and John Williams. But I prefer Terry Goldsmith anyway, you know, or Nicholas Rosa. I can go on and on. I’m not good with names and names of songs. But I tend to remember sounds, music, melody.
“ I begin with emotion. I begin quiet. I hear music in my head. I am very fortunate to have something called perfect pitch. … So when I listen to a piece of music that I’d never heard before, I automatically know every note used on the piece. I know the chord progression. I know every instrument. And I know what’s the notes they’re saying. And it’s just specific words. And it’s like somebody talking to me. So the way I experience music is a very strange by 99 percent of the population of the planet. It’s like someone talking to me or reading a book. So when it’s time for me to write, I sit and then I feel. And then the feeling tells you, you know. If you’re feeling like it’s midnight, the moon is out, the ocean is dead calm, there is no wind, you’re about to talk for the first time to someone that you’re in love with that you’d never admitted to her you’re in love with her, what would be the first word that comes out of your mouth?
Yanni, we talked before about how your music is ageless. But clearly there was a time in the early 1990s during which, you know, your popularity exploded. I mean you had four albums that sold gold or platinum and you were everywhere. What was it, 20 years later with respect of what was it about that time that had made public so captured by your music?
“I wish I can have the answer for that one. I didn’t pay that much attention to that. I just enjoyed the popularity. I enjoyed that I had the ability to connect. Theoretically, and I cannot prove it nor can anybody else, is theoretically - and it happens to artist. And that’s when we have the big successes, I think, is when you somehow hit the same stride as society. And being an artist like I am who I don’t pay attention to what society listens to, I don’t care if they’re listening to hip-hop or rap or whatever. I’m just going to write my music. I don’t care what anybody else is doing. It’s very difficult to get to be in synch with society. And I guess in the 90s, I must have gotten lucky and I feel I was in an area where we were in the right place at the right time.
The period from 1993 to 2006, you only put - in 13 years, you only put out one studio album. Why was that? I mean why were you not writing more at that point?
“I went through a very difficult time during those years. Because I think after ’98, I kind of burned out. I got to finish doing 120 some shows live. I had produced two videos -- one in the Forbidden City in China and the other one in India, the Taj Mahal, which were not a walk in the park. That was very difficult to do. And I was looking to go to Latin America. I still (unintelligible) North and South America and go to South Africa. And I was looking at it and I thought I was going to go crazy if I didn’t quit.
“And so I kind of resigned, so ran away from music and went home to Greece and hang out with my mother and father for a couple of months at least until I finally one morning woke up and I was semi-happy for no reason, and I thought okay, I’m on my way to recovery. Is this - I mean I’m making a very serious situation - I’m describing to you very quickly. It wasn’t fun. And so then I decided to spend time going back to a lot of the countries that I had visited during my concerts and stay for a few days or weeks and live with the people and see what that was all about. And really you have a deeper understanding about - it was a great time in my life and difficult. And then slowly I came back with music. And that’s why you see that little gap.”
You were just talking about the great film composers who you’re influenced by. Have you done films? Have you wanted to do films?
“Yes, it’s - when I was starting out my career, I had just moved to Los Angeles.. I think it was around ’85, ’86. I’ve scored a few small pictures just to get started. I had moved to Los Angeles thinking maybe I would do a movie career where I would just score movies. But I fell in love with performing live. And I love playing live so much that I just decided maybe I will score more movies when I get older, much older than I am now. And, yes, I have done a few, but they’re small movies. A lot of good ideas came out of trying to do that. I love that kind of art form. And you will see me score pictures in the future. You’re not going to see me do it on a (persistence) and consistence level. I will only score pictures that I like.”
Do you have any plans for your next big site that you’re going to play at?
“El Morro was good enough for me for now. Yes, we have been invited - yes, I do. I’d be a liar if I said no. We’re invited everywhere in the world to play. And there are so many beautiful places. And it’s not just the beauty. It’s also the symbolism of the place. And being able - and for example, I remember many years ago - it’s not a very well known fact, but when the two Koreas, North and South Korea were looking like as if they were kind of come together, I was the Number 1 choice, performer, on the 38th Parallel at the military zone, for a concert for North and South Korea. So I would have done that in a heartbeat because it has meaning and the fact that, you know, I was very touched that I was even considered.
“ I have a lot of examples like that. But these concerts are so difficult to do. And, you know, there’re heartaches. They’re hard on you. There’s a lot of responsibility. You have to do the right thing. You have to say the right thing always. You have to present the appropriate sounds for the monument, for the cultures, for the religion, for - there’s a lot of things that come to play.”
It looks like you’re about halfway through the tour at the moment. If you could kind of give a self-evaluation of how this tour has gone so far and what the rest of us can expect.
“It’s been a joy. It’s been difficult, but it’s been a joy. And this particular tool, we went in more different countries and more exotic countries than any other tour in my whole life. In early 90s, I went to Southeast Asia and Australia. And I felt that was really exotic. But now, I mean, we just - in a matter of a month or less or around that area, we’ve been through, I mean, all of South America, Mexico, of course. But we turned around, and all of a sudden, now we’re in Beijing. We were playing cities in China, doing a really large tour in China. We’re playing in South Korea and then we’re going to Thailand. Amazing experiences there because we were there when the floods were there. So I was on the frontline filling the sandbags myself. Amazing experiences. And then we turned around and we were in Singapore. And then we go to Oman, which was one of our favorite places to go of all - everybody in the crew and the band. It’s just such a beautiful surprise, how great Oman was. And then you turn around and you got - two days later, you’re playing in Dubai. And two days later, you’re in the Moscow inside the Kremlin. You know, we’re playing in - at the old Kremlin theater.
“These experiences, when you put them all together … man, it opens your mind. It changes you. It brings such a hope. It brings the best out of you. Because you have to be on your best behavior. You have to be intelligent. You have to be ready for any possibility. You have to make sure that everyone you’re traveling with is safe, that, you know. And thank God - I got to tell you something. We were treated like kings in every of the countries I mentioned. We never felt in danger. They loved having us there. In fact, we did a lot of firsts in a lot of the countries; a lot of firsts. We were allowed to do things in Oman that nobody else can. It really touched my heart.
"When I was still in China, the Chinese people decided to honor me by the adoption of a baby panda.
Yanni and 'adopted' baby panda
Now that’s a hard thing not only because they’re so cute, they reserve this type of honor for countries only, not for individuals or personalities. And they asked me to pick the gender and to also name it. So I decided to pick a female. And I named her Santorini. And so it’s like, Santorini is a very appropriate name. It’s the most beautiful Greek island. “Irini” means peace. So it stands peace - for the panda of peace. And just like every other proud father, I can - I think that my panda is the most beautiful panda in the whole world.
“We were recently joined from the World Wildlife Fund. It is a mouthful especially for the Greek. And I’m very honored that they decided to join us in helping the giant panda, which they’ve been doing for years and years. In fact, the place we went for the adoption to finance its amount themselves.
“But I really, I’m very touched when they decided to do this. And my job right now is to make Santorini the most famous panda in the world because I want her to become a symbol to raise funds and help the World Wildlife Fund, which obviously they care about the giant pandas as much as I do. But they care just as much about the rest of animals around the planet. And they care about the whole planet. And that I’ve shared that to you with them. And I’m very proud to be with them. And someday, we’re all going to realize that we are one people living in this one very magical, beautiful place we call earth. And whatever we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.”
How does what you went through in your life affect where you are today?
“I grew up in a very sheltered, beautiful fishing town of Kalamata, Greece. And I had great parents. So I had no excuses. I broke the Greek National Record in freestyle swimming when I was 14 years old. So I was an athlete most of my life. I started swimming when I was 7 years old and all the way until I came to America when I was 18. And then at that time, I thought I was going to become a psychologist, a psychiatrist. So I go t a BA from the University of Minnesota in Psychology. And then at 21, I decided maybe I should become a musician.
“I’m a fighter. You know, I take on anything. I’m not afraid to work. I don’t live in fear, even though I do experience fear. I try not to stay in it too long. I tend to be optimistic towards the future, which I like that. And I try to stay as long as I can in optimistic point of view. But I’m not naive. I’m not ignorant. I - because of the traveling, I have learned a lot. And I think -- not that we all ever get to that point -- as I become older, I’m finding a better balance between optimism, pessimism, realism.
“But at the same time, the reason why people enjoy my music is the sense of optimism. There’s a sense of resolution. And that comes from the way I look at life. And that automatically goes into the music whether I like it or not. And I think it’s answered the question that was asked earlier of me that I didn’t answer very well. But I think it relates - it’s probably why my music connects with so many people for such long period of time, is that the outlook on life - the outlook I have on life, the fearlessness, the optimism, the faith into one’s self. I feel pain just like everybody else. It hurts. But maybe because of swimming, you know, being an athlete, I learned how to tolerate pain more than others. You know, the question is great. I can keep talking forever. It’s psychological stuff.
It’s now been more than a year since “Truth of Touch.” Are you writing music? Do you have any designs on a new album yet?
“A little bit. A little bit. I think it’s a little premature because what you might not realize is the tour - the Live at El Morro CD and DVD to come out now. It had to be done, out [by] Christmas, which means I cancelled Christmas literally. Before we finished that show on the 17th, 18th of December -- and you have to you do the math. So I had one month to finish the video and the audio for that album. And so we worked every day including Saturdays and Sundays, a lot of us, to manage to finish it. And then it takes - you still got a lot of work. You have to go to books. You have to do the photo, the cover art. You have to take - it keeps going on and on and on and on. It’s a lot of work. The only time that I have a little bit of pleasure is exactly when I’m left alone sometimes, usually at night. And I feel like something new and fresh. And it comes. And I usually record it, (unintelligible) and move on. But no, I’ve not been in the studio with finishing songs. I work with ideas. I improvise. I have fun. But not yet. I think it’s a little premature.”
YANNI, 8 p.m. June 27, State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton. Tickets $80 and $85. Info: www.statetheatre.org, 800-999-STATE.
Yanni in the 1990s
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