YANNI

Details

Category: Music

Published on Friday, 13 July 2018 06:27

Do you know Γιάννης Χρυσομάλλης (Giannis Chrysomallis), better known as Yanni? He is a famous Greek composer, pianist, keyboarder and music producer and today I would like to tell you more about him. Yanni composes mainly instrumental music, a mixture of jazz, classic and rock and he gained international recognition through his concerts at historical venues, especially the ‘Yanni Live at the Acropolis’ concert.

Yanni was born on the 14th November 1954 in Kalamata. He always loved music and could play the piano by the age of six. In 1972, he left Greece and went to Minnesota to study psychology. After graduating, he decided to focus for one year only on music, after which he decided that music would be his vocation. During his time in university, he played in a local rock’n’roll band where he could improve his skills at the piano and the keyboard.
He started to compose his own music and released his first solo album ‘Optimistique’ in 1980.
Between 1985 and 1990, he released two more albums before he moved to Hollywood. There, he recorded four film scores and released three albums.
In 1993, Yanni decided to do an international tour where he played at many famous spots all around the world, for example the Toji Temple in Japan, the Royal Albert Hall in London and the Acropolis in Greece. The concert at the Acropolis was filmed and became the second most sold music video of all time right after Michael Jacksons ‘Thriller’.
He continued his path to play at famous venues to combine extraordinary music and outstanding sights and managed to play at the Taj Mahal in India and the Forbidden City in China.
After a two year sabbatical, he started to release albums again and wrote an autobiography.

In summary, Yanni released 26 albums and was often nominated for the Grammy. He played at eight UNESCO World Heritage Sites (the Acropolis, the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City, El Morro, Carthage, the Kremlin, Byblos and the Giza Pyramids) and composed music for four televised sporting events (the US Open, Masters, Olympics and Tour de France). Some of his well known songs are for example ‘Nostalgia’, ‘The Rain Must Fall’, ‘Waltz in 7-8’ or ‘One Man’s Dream’.
He is of course not playing alone, but with talented musicians from all over the world. Some who played often with him are Charlie Adams at the drums, Samvel Yervinyan at the violin, Ming Freeman at the keyboard, Pedro Eustache at the saxophone and different flutes and Victor Espinola at the harp.

For me, Yannis’ music is very special and hard to describe, but incredible beautiful, really diverse and relaxing. Best, you just listen to his music yourself. I linked some songs below my article or you experience his music live at the ‘Yanni 25 Acropolis Anniversary Concert Tour’.