Yanni Voices [PA]

Performer: Yanni
Engineer: Yanni; Travis Meck; Silvio Richetto
Producer: Anthony Stabile; Amber Cordero; Robert Murray; Yanni; Cesar Lemos
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Audio Remasterer: Chris Bellman. Director: Beth Broday. Arrangers: Yanni; Cesar Lemos. For over 25 years, Greek New Age composer Yanni has made his name with sweeping sound-scapes and tranquil, instrumental melodies. On VOCES, he expands his palette with the addition of Latin pop vocal performances from the likes of Jos� Feliciano, Chloe, Olga Ta��n, Ender Thomas, and others. With the assistance of Grammy-winning producer Ric Wake (CHICAGO) and a guest performance by Arturo Sandoval, Yanni offers both brand new compositions and re-envisioned works from his extensive catalogue, which are only enhanced by the rapturous voices on hand. VOCES also comes with a bonus DVD featuring live footage from a concert in Acapulco, as well as a making-of documentary. Six years after his 2003 studio album, ETHNICITY, New Age icon Yanni finally returns with VOICES. Although missing his signature mustache, the popular keyboardist presents songs both familiar and new in collaboration with four young vocalists--Chloe, Leslie Mills, Nathan Pacheco, and Ender Thomas. Highlights of this dynamic collection include the operatic "Omaggio (Tribute)" and the pensive "Never Leave the Sun." There is also a Spanish-language edition, VOCES, released in conjunction with VOICES. This is a time when the title truly does say it all. Yanni's Voices finds the contemporary instrumental composer collaborating with singers for the first time, and if that wasn't enough of a risk, Yanni and producer Rick Wake picked four unknowns to contribute lyrics and melodies to existing pieces and new songs alike. Upon first glance, singing gives Voices the appearance of pop, and there are some tracks that are structured like pop in a way that Yanni's music rarely is, but this isn't greatly removed from the increasingly rhythmic worldbeat that he's made in the decade preceding this 2009 album. This still has a deliberately exotic, multi-cultural feel with the emphasis on texture, not melody, so the singers -- Leslie Mills, Nathan Pacheco, Ender Thomas, and Chloe -- tend to fade into the tapestry, often to he extent that it's not immediately clear what language is being sung. This vocal transparency is not by accident, but by design, because this is still a Yanni album: he may have singers but he is the frontman, the man responsible for the form and feel of the sound. And Voices is surely an album where the sound, not the song, is a paramount, and that's what makes this first-ever Yanni album with singing not all that different from his other albums after all. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

One of modern instrumental music's most distinctive and popular composers, Yanni popularized the combination of synthesizers and full-scale symphony orchestra. The Greek performer combined his musical abilities with a flair for flamboyant visuals, coming across like a more dignified, New Age version of Liberace. His mix of music and spectacle made him a star in the 1990s.

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