Yanni

Yanni
a.k.a. Yanni Chryssomallis

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GREEK MYSTIQUE

The Enigmatic Yanni Shares the Secrets of His Success
From his rhapsodic piano music to his live extravaganzas at the Acropolis, Taj Mahal, and China's Forbidden City, Yanni has captured the hearts of romantics and musical adventurers everywhere. After years of exhausting international touring, he took a well-deserved break and set off to see the world more slowly. Now the smoky-eyed Greek with the flowing hair returns to the keyboard with If I Could Tell You, his first studio album in seven years. An amazingly rich solo effort, the new disc brims with Yanni's signature, scintillating soundscapes, which the composer conjures with exotic instruments, gorgeously-treated vocals and his high-tech studio wizardry. The mysterious Yanni spoke from sunny Florida with Barnes & Noble.com's Carol Wright about his travels, inspirations, and evolving creative process.

Barnes & Noble.com: It's been a few years since your last album and tour. What have you been doing during your sabbatical?

Yanni: After the last concert tour -- 110 concerts, a year-and-a-half non-stop on the road -- I was so tired and burned out that I needed time off. The India and China tours were intense, difficult, and long. I needed time just to live. This time when I traveled to Europe and Asia, I stayed in one place for weeks. I accumulated a lot of new life experiences, and I recharged my batteries. So when it came time for me to sit down and create music again, it was all there for me.

B&N.com: Did your two years overseas influence the music on If I Could Tell You?

Y: When you are in these foreign countries, you get to eat their food, to breathe the air they breathe, enjoy life the way they enjoy life, and to see what's important to them. And drink their wine. And listen to their music, played where they enjoy it.

But I don't think there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship. It is more a sense that you change because you come in contact with different ways of living. And as you change, your creative process changes, and what interests you changes&because everything you create is directly related to who you are and your depth of understanding about life. My travels affect me, and as they affect me, so my music is influenced.

B&N.com: What do the songs mean to you?

Y: I don't really like to explain my songs. The absence of lyrics in most of the pieces of music I've written in my career says that much. Everything that I want to say is right in the music, and I feel that attempting to explain this music with words diminishes it.

What I can tell you is that I really like this album. I feel it is more of a "listening" album than Live at the Acropolis or Tribute, which were conceived as live concert experiences. A concertgoer is stuck in their seats for two hours. They can't move, they can't talk; I have their undivided attention. So I make things exciting, and perhaps the two albums were a little too dramatic for home listening. The If I Could Tell You CD was made as a home album in the first place. I feel it's more even-tempered and I hope enjoyable.

B&N.com: Who is the lovely woman soloist who sings vocalise?

Y: That, too, is difficult to explain. I am torn as to whether to describe to the fans how it's done because I don't want to destroy the magic, the fantasy, and the imagination one has when listening. However, I will just tell you that the entire album -- all the instruments, everything you hear on the album -- was done by me through the manipulation of sound. There are no other performers on this album.

B&N.com: On the new album, it sounds like the chorus is singing the Latin word "Ave" on the "On Sacred Ground" track.

Y: It might sound like that to some. You have to understand that these voices have been manipulated electronically, and it's intentional that the listener doesn't understand exactly what is being sung. So if you hear "Ave," then it's there for you.

B&N.com: Did you have a specific place in mind for this "Sacred Ground"?

Y: There absolutely was a specific place in mind, but it's difficult to describe with words. It's not so much a physical place, but more of a spiritual place that has to do with creativity and higher understanding.

B&N.com: You do so much with music, yet you don't read musical notation.

Y: It has never been necessary for me to learn how to read music. As far as writing it goes, I hire someone to make the charts for the whole orchestra because it is a very tedious process. Not being able to read and write music is not the same as being illiterate in speech and writing. Music is primarily an auditory domain, and when you translate it to a piece of paper to examine it visually, it loses a lot. If I write a song and have it written out for the instruments in the orchestra, the musicians won't necessarily just read the music and then play it as I want it. I have to be there for weeks to explain it more because you can't convey everything on a piece of paper.

B&N.com: What are the elements of a great love song?

Y: Truth is the number one element in whatever you do with music. You never express love if you don't know what love is. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to lie with instrumental music because it deals in emotions only. So telling the truth with music about what life feels like to you, which is what I try to do, is probably the only way that I know how to do it and how to connect. If a musician feels romantic, and knows what romance is, then he can express it in notes instead of words.

B&N.com: Will you ever mount another monumental production like those you did at the Taj Mahal, the Forbidden City, and the Acropolis?

Y: I have been asked by a lot of different countries do to these concerts, but they are so difficult. The Taj Mahal and China's Forbidden City concerts each took two years. It was hard work, expensive, and an incredible amount of risk-taking from just being in a foreign land. So much transporting of equipment and people! And even selecting the music, there was the responsibility to present a concert that the local people felt was appropriate for their monument. I may mount another show some day, but have no plans for the immediate future.

B&N.com: What CDs are you listening to these days?

Y: I do not listen to a lot of music, particularly in the last few months because I have been working on my album. And when I work, I work 16-hour days, so there is no room for anything else. Plus, I avoid watching television or listening to the radio because I don't want to be influenced while I'm creating. However, I do enjoy any kind of music; I try to be exposed to all music. There is beauty in everything.