Yanni (1954—)

Along with Slim Whitman, Ray Stevens, and Kenny G, New Age artist Yanni is one of those inexplicable music curiosities who rode to the top of the charts on a sea of critical incredulity. Dismissed by one reviewer as a "musical Fabio," Yanni is known not so much for the music he makes as the sensation he creates. His albums and videos have sold multiple millions worldwide, and he has personally saved more than a few public television stations with his prodigious pledge-drive potency.

Born Yanni Chryssomallis in Kalamata, Greece, the future New Age superstar was a national swimming champion in his teens. After immigrating to the United States in 1972, he passed up a career in clinical psychology to pursue his creative muse full time. A self-taught musician, Yanni began composing in his head, relying on collaborators to put his orchestrations down on paper. He released his first full-length album, Keys to Imagination, in 1986.

The "Yanni sound" changed very little over the next several years. Gauzy strains of synthesizer continued to waft insidiously down upon the listener, as vaguely Mediterranean-sounding hooks are stated and restated by various instruments. The music incorporated elements of classical, New Age, and world beat into a sonic melange that one unfavorable reviewer called "aural wallpaper." Even Yanni himself often referred to the plastic arts when describing it. "Music is like creating an emotional painting," he explained. "The sounds are colors." Colors derived from an irritatingly narrow spectrum, according to some critics, who found Yanni's repetition of musical themes numbingly aggravating. Despite these brickbats, however, the Greek tycoon's record sales climbed throughout the 1980s.

Yanni's live appearances became major moneymakers as well, as the mustachioed and classically handsome composer developed a large and devoted fan following. For concerts, Yanni assembled a multi-piece orchestra with instrumentation culled from virtually every continent, over which he would preside beatifically from behind a stack of keyboards. Yanni often staged his appearances at major international landmarks, like the Taj Mahal and China's Forbidden City. These lavishly mounted productions generated enormous viewership for public television stations across America and were aired repeatedly during pledge weeks. On one Saturday night in 1994, his concert documentary at Greece's Acropolis helped one PBS affiliate raise over $50,000 in pledges. A number of PBS stations even canceled a previously scheduled Andy Williams special to rebroadcast Yanni's performance.

Befitting his superstar status, Yanni cultivated a personal life designed to keep him in the crosshairs of the paparazzi. In 1989, the then little-known Yanni began dating Linda Evans, star of TV's Dynasty. The flaxen-haired beauty reportedly was won over by the sinewy Greek's command of the music of the spheres. They would remain a couple until 1998, when conflicts over the directions of their respective careers compelled them to end the relationship.

Indeed, much of Yanni's success has been attributed to his appeal to women. But the New Age superstar has bristled at the suggestion that his cover-of-a-romance-novel appearance drove his record sales. He claimed the bulk of his fan mail comes not from sex-starved housewives but from the homebound and the infirm, who find his music soothing. Some have even ascribed healing powers to Yanni's compositions, a claim the composer modestly deflected away.

"I don't see myself as a peacemaker at all or anything like that," he told the Orange County Register in 1998, "I'm merely standing in one place saying it's possible for us to do this, for people of the world to share in my music. If I can play even a minute role in something like that in my lifetime, then I will have accomplished something special."

Yanni's earthly mission continued to draw adherents throughout the 1990s. In early 1999, he sold out ten dates at New York's Radio City Music Hall. Other performers have even followed his path to success, the critics be damned. The composer and former Entertainment Tonight host John Tesh appeared to have schooled on Yanni's PBS-driven marketing plan, replete with extravagantly produced performances at such notable sites as Red Rocks, Nevada.

—Robert E. Schnakenberg