Yanni - Live: The Concert Event
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Music CD Cover
Artist: YanniBrand: YANNI
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-08-15
Music Label: Image Entertainment
Soundtracks:
- Rainmaker
- Keys to Imagination
- Enchantment
- Standing in Motion
- On Sacred Ground
- Playtime
- Until the Last Moment
- If I could Tell You
- For All Seasons
- The Storm
- Prelude
- Nostalgia
Free Music Notes for Live: The Concert Event
Free Music Review: Mixed Bag
Hit: 5 Stars
Summary: Buy it! It is unique, energetic, emotional, and inspiring. The solo work (though a bit much) is impressive. The lack of a full-sized symphony is painfully obvious, but that is reconciled through interesting electronics and a generous, generous bass. For veteran Yanni listeners, the artist has packed a few surprises. Take for example, the extensive use of jazz trumpet, the introduction of Paraguyan harp and hammered dulcimer into his music, and the immense electronica/techno influences. You might even detect slight hints of salsa and latino music in parts, and the keyboard solos are classier than ever. Unfortunately:
What follows next deconstructs the album from a technical standpoint.
There are perhaps a few other subject titles I can think of - like "Underwhelming" or "Yanni trips being trippy." Granted, I'm giving the recording 5 stars since in comparison to the substantial mass of absurdly homogeneous and terrible popular/mainstream music, The Concert Event is a jewel. However, when held up to the Yanni standard, a few problems plague the performance.
Upon first listen, one of the aspects of these pieces leaped out at me: the absense of dynamic contrast. Whereas previous concert recordings like Acropolis and Tribute had dramatic swells in the ebb and flow of texture, Concert Event has a lot less. With the exception of The Storm and Prelude, the music gets straight to the point...no dramatic introductions or real conclusions. You are instantly bombarded with monotonous techno bass drums that overshadow Charlie Adams' normally artful percussive supplements. If you load these songs onto a music editor, the graphic waveform is essentially a rectangle. For non-musicians, that means the songs don't really go anywhere; they don't head a certain direction or let you know when you've arrived at a climax.
The fact that Yanni is using a much smaller chamber orchestra (as opposed to the medium-sized symphony in earlier concerts) shows. To account for this, he allows his electronics to shine, and indeed the result is some fantastic and intriguing other-wordly timbres (For All Seasons and Play Time). But the attempts to simulate orchestral force with such a small ensemble plus an overdose of electronics produces a fake and underwhelming effect. This leads to another problem: emptiness of texture. Listen to Rainmaker from Ethnicity and Rainmaker from Concert Event and the difference is remarkable. It's not just the fact that Ethnicity had a helping of reverb to produce a full sound, but the orchestrations (though some of them electronic) were rich and dense. Here, there is a bit of hollowness. The renditions of classics like Nostalgia and Keys to Imagination seem lazy in comparison to Acropolis.
I also take some issue with how the violin soloists and cello soloist was amplified. Listen to Memoirs of a Geisha, and you will hear excellent recording and microphone work on Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma. The sound design here produces distant-sounding solos that sound awkwardly electronic for acoustic instruments.
Lastly, this CD's greatest strength, the stunning solo work on a variety of instruments (hammered dulcimer, Paragyuan harp, keyboards, orchestral strings, percussion, trumpet, didgeridoo, chinese flute, duduk...to name a few) proves to be too much of a good thing. Acropolis and Tribute had a successful integration of solo passages into their pieces, but here, some of the solos seem to be sloppily tacked on just for the sake of being there. For All Seasons exhibits fantastic solos, but only two of the eight minutes are really from the song. Playtime, Rainmaker, and On Sacred Ground suffer from the same solo-overkill-syndrome (as wonderful as they are).
But, despite my nit-picky criticisms, you have to appreciate the immense amount of work put into this recording. And despite the problems mentioned above, this album is still quite an adventure - instrumental music on rocket fuel.
Live: The Concert Event Poster
No Description Available.Genre: Classical Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 15-AUG-2006
Who can fault an artist who so clearly embraces a one-planet, one-people worldview? Someone who recruits guest instrumentalists from every hemisphere to underscore his fondness for multiculturalism and convey his wish for global harmony? You can't help but admire Yanni, the Greek keyboardist/composer, even while acknowledging such nobility does not always translate into deeply satisfying music. On this, the audio-only component of his third made-for-television concert production (filmed in 2005 in Las Vegas), Yanni continues in his adopted role of True Egalitarian, playing a few bars to open a piece, then fading into the background to let other musicians (on violin, trumpet, sax, didgeridoo, hammer dulcimer, even keyboards) command the music's flow. A lovely gesture, but one that often results in extended soloing that sidetracks, even derails, the focus of the music. (Consider "Playtime," where Ming Freeman plays the jazzy piano solo, and the disc's previously unreleased track, "The Storm," pairing violinists Samvel Yervinyan and Sayaka Katsuki in a showy duet that is reminiscent of something from Bond.) Thus while the musicianship is first-rate, the production is superb, and some tracks are terrific (too bad "Standing in Motion" fades out so quickly), this disc is more about the jamming and less about staying on compositional task. Likely this project will be better appreciated in its DVD version, where the staging and artist interaction is on display. Meanwhile, some longtime fans may be left yearning for a day when Yanni will step up to his keyboards, drop the hammer, and let his own muse rock. --Terry Wood
More Yanni
 Ultimate Yanni |  Live at the Acropolis |  Reflections of Passion |
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