Yanni Voices (Review...)

I first got introduced to Yanni when he performed at the Taj... It was a time when music meant Annu Malik, Nadeem-Shravan and the like, AR Rahman was a novelty... and EVERY song which was not Hindi, was English. There was a lot of hoopla around him performing and I HAD to see what all the fuss was about.

That one hour was, well, interesting. The music was different - there were no lyrics, the music was in layers, and it evoked feelings like no other. Without knowing the technicalities of what I was listening to, I was hooked! I bought the Sony BMG audio tapes of the man's music - the ones that cost ~100 rupees, with those big plastic covers. I bought a walkman because no one else seemed to appreciate the music as much as I did. I devoured as much of Yanni as I could.

Over the years, Yanni's music has evolved. From being piano-centric, it became more orchestrated, as he experimented with sounds, vocals and energy. However, what I loved was that it was instrumental largely. The vocals, if any, were supplementary and didn't take center-stage.

That, has changed with his new Album - Voices. Yanni has collaborated with 4 upcoming artists (Nathan Pacheco, Chloe, Ender Thomas and Leslie Mills), who were told to come up with their own vocal compositions by using Yanni's music as a canvas. The result is a vocal interpretation of the music that I so dearly love. The album starts with Nathan Pacheco's interpretation of "The Tribute", a very opera-like song {understandably - Nathan studied Opera}. The album continues through the moods and ends with Pacheco's rendition based in "Adiago in C Minor", ending with an operatic feel like it started.

On the whole, it comes together very well - especially Chloe's songs (The Keeper being my favourite). It did take some time getting used to hearing voices where they were never expected though. And especially in case of Nathan Pacheco - the voices seem forced (in fact, the songs of "Tribute" don't lend themselves too well to vocal interpretation and Pacheco's voice seems to overpower the myraid layers of music that is in the score").

Overall though, the album is powerful and most of the songs picked have been the ones that you feel were crying out for an interpretation like this. Yanni says that the human voice is the most powerful and emotional means of communuication and on the evidence of this album, I'd largely agree. If you LIKE Yanni's music, you'll like Voices for the most part - do give it a listen.

PS: I hear that the Spanish version of the CD is better and there are a couple of songs in the Voices Tour that Yanni went on... Hopefully I'll get hold of those too.