A couple of days ago, I had to help a friend of mine get a gift for his “secret angel” (sort of like a secret Santa, but without the cultural offensiveness to those who don’t observe Christmas). I’ve been playing piano for more than twelve years, and one of my gifts is both a blessing and a curse:
The ability to improvise (on the spot) in a way that sounds exactly like Yanni.
So at any rate, mellow piano music doesn’t bother anyone much, and my friend needed a gift and couldn’t really come up with much. So we went downstairs, he plugged his laptop in, and we produced a tolerable recording.
Anyways, I was explaining to Tim who Yanni is, and he didn’t know, so I looked it up on the cooler Google. I found a lot of spiffy stuff:
-Yanni’s biography, for example, is just funny somehow.
-Timeline (crushing indeed!)
As a child, Yanni heard music in his head and he simply wanted to hear it come out of the piano too, so he needed to learn how to play in order to make that happen. He felt a certain freedom with the keys that might have been crushed under the weight of structured learning.
-This article on those crazy cloning people, which was mostly entertaining for the final quote:
The group insists that it made the announcement during the news-dry holiday season out of an interest in advancing the field of mad science not just for publicity. A quick survey of their largely European and Euro-looking membership hints at its real goal: to ensure that in the future, everyone will look vaguely like Yanni.
Finally 
:
first off, Yanni’s compositions all follow a very rigid format which goes something like slow melodic classical introduction (usually the best part of the song), followed by a series of solos on different instruments (violin, keyboard, flute etc) and climaxing in an ubrupt and upbeat ending. this gets old. also, if you have ever seen the accompanying video, Yanni looks quite phoney at times because at all times he’s pumping his fists and smiling broadly like a baby with gas. this would be ok if he only did it sparingly at the climax or other key moments of his songs but by doing it throughout it just looks staged.
Cheers!
-Chris
P.S. I also wrote a paper on Chinese political thought right before the revolution, but you needn’t bother reading it. It’s just as boring as the rest of them.
P.P.S. That music linked to in this post is copyrighted. Copyright Chris 2005, all rights reserved. It is sacred, like Yanni. Or something like that. You may not exploit my secret ability for your nefarious capitalist schemes.