Please note that there is a mistake regarding Yanni's age in this article. --------------------------------------------
Albuquerque Journal March 5, 2004
Yanni Makes Tingley His Own
By Leanne Potts
New Age keyboardist Yanni has performed shows in ancient structures where warriors, kings and rajahs have trod: the Acropolis in Greece, Beijing's Forbidden City and the Taj Mahal in India.
On Thursday, the flowing-haired one played in an ancient arena where rodeo cowboys have fallen: Tingley Coliseum in Albuquerque.
The crowd of around 3,200 didn't mind the inelegant setting. They sipped $5.50 glasses of wine during the intermission of Yanni's 150-minute show and sat silently, politely, as he and his 25-piece band played songs with names like "Enchantment" and "The Promise."
Oh, sure, make fun of Yanni.
Critics scoff that his music is too bland, too pretty, too lobotomized and saccharine to take seriously. But Yanni is a pop phenom who has sold millions of albums and concert tickets, raised piles of money for PBS and inhabited the fantasies of many a woman bored with her recliner-sprawled husband.
Yanni concerts are estrogen-scented events where women put on their best date clothes and force their man to turn off the TV and come with them. Yanni concerts are revenge for every woman who ever sat through a Super Bowl party.
At Tingley, Yanni came on stage wearing leather pants and wielding the same middlebrow Mediterranean exoticism as Furio from "The Sopranos."
"I wrote this when I was in a dark time in my life," he said in the introduction to one song.
Yanni was joined on stage by a string section, horns, a flutist, backup singers in flowy black gowns, a guitarist, two drummers and a harpist. He stood at center stage amid a bank of keyboards.
Three video screens provided 20-foot-tall closeups of Yanni, who is 53, but looks 39. He played mostly instrumentals that sounded like a glass of white wine in a condo hot tub.
The Yanni faithful lapped it up.
Suella Grider of Laguna came to the show with her mother, Grethel, who lives in Grants.
"We came in the rain and the mud," Suella said. "The mud."
It was Grethel who turned her daughter, an assistant at an Albuquerque stock brokerage, onto Yanni a decade ago.
On the way into the show, the pair had stopped at the souvenir stand in the lobby and bought $130 worth of Yanni T-shirts, posters, keychains and programs. The tickets for their seats, just 30 feet from the stage, cost $87.50 each.
WHy can't any of these journalists get Yanni's age right.. not that it really matters, I just find it strange. Yanni is a remarkable human being, as we all know. Just reading this article and others posted makes me more anxious to see him again. I have 27 more days left till Bridgeport!! I can't wait!!
quote:Originally posted by allic321: WHy can't any of these journalists get Yanni's age right.. not that it really matters, I just find it strange. Yanni is a remarkable human being, as we all know. Just reading this article and others posted makes me more anxious to see him again. I have 27 more days left till Bridgeport!! I can't wait!!
With Love in Yanni, alli
I wouldn't be bothered by it too much. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Yanni laughs at these mistakes. At least the writer went on to say he didn't look it!
The older Yanni gets theBETTER HE LOOKS I say,50 is said in an other artilce that I have a copy of,now 53 numbers are only numbers. we here know that,don't we?
Nice to read everything about the concerts and the MAIN MAN.
Topic Closed
we here know that,don't we?
