An Evening with Yanni

Yanni

During the past week, when I would tell my friends that my plans for Thursday evening revolved around the Yanni concert in Salt Lake, they would guffaw and chortle and snicker. It caused me to second guess how cool my plans actually were. Was this not something that an average 22 year old might do on a Thursday? When Holly confused Yanni with Kenny G. (Thoroughly uncultured! Sorry Holly...), I knew that Yanni was definitely not the coolest thing for a 22 year old to see, probably not even slightly cool. And so I slowly slipped into an annoyingly teenage-like mood: grumpy and resentful. All day long all I could think of was how much I did not want to go see Yanni.

Not Yanni. I repeat: NOT Yanni

But luckily, due to my awesome sister, who gets excited about just about everything, especially over really great things like Yanni, I was finally able to let go of being a pouty kid and get excited. You see, the thing about Yanni is, my family owns all his albums and we also have the VHS from his live concert at the Acropolis that we watched over and over and over again. Yanni was (is) kind of a big deal in our household. So much so that we just about have every song memorized, down to the exact length of the drum solo (Exaggeration? You bet. That drum solo is really long). Our parents really did want us to be cultured and so they raised us on the classics: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Vivaldi, and Yanni. (That was a joke...only slightly...maybe...).

So there we were in Abravanel Hall--wedged between an old lady who was dragged there by her Yanni-loving daughter and a middle-aged man who was dragged there by his wife--waiting to see Yanni. Lynnette and I discussed which song should be first if Yanni were to do the concert right. The orchestra came out, tuned their instruments (which I think is one of the greatest sounds in the world), the cellist struck up a beautiful little prelude, and then out he came. Yanni! I literally screamed. Like a young girl would upon seeing Justin Bieber. And then the orchestra began to play the very song that Lynnette and I knew should be the first, and I cried. Cried tears of utter happiness. I could have just died it was the best thing.

It was the best.thing.ever. If my life were to end right at this moment, the morning after I had seen Yanni, that would be okay. Because whether it's "cool" or not, I love Yanni!

-KB