I Did It

I went to see the Yanni concert here in Minneapolis last night. Go ahead, let the Yanni jokes fly...I can handle it. Seriously, though, I won a pair of tickets to Yanni Voices off of my friend Amber's blog. Chad thought I was teasing him when I told him, but he eventually agreed to go. So last night we headed downtown, grabbed some grub at Hard Rock Cafe across the street from the Target Center, and then headed to the concert. There was definitely a lot of GREAT people watching to be had! I was pleasantly surprised to see that about 40% of the audience was under 65, so we didn't feel TOTALLY out of place. As soon as we got in and took our seats along comes a guy who may have had a few too many cocktails...probably in his late 20s, dressed as Yanni. I'm talking like the old school Yanni we all remember from when we were kids, long hair, mustache, black suit, the WHOLE get up. He was a few seats down from us and was quite the riot to watch/listen to. He kept yelling, "YANNI GAVE ME THESE TICKETS!!! I'M SO NERVOUS ABOUT PERFORMING TONIGHT!!!". Well thankfully he got up and wandered to another section shortly after the show started...we saw him a while later with a security officer. Go figure.

As the show started Chad and I were totally unsure what to expect. But once we got past the fact that we were AT a Yanni concert, I have to say, I rather enjoyed it, especially the other musicians who are touring with Yanni on his "new and improved" tour. The vocalists were outstanding and the musicians - wow, definitely some of the best I've EVER seen/heard. Maybe I'm just a complete music dork, but having played the violin for 7+ years when I was younger, watching the violinists play was SO incredibly cool. At one part during the show they did like a "dueling violins" gig - it was AWESOME!!! Then there was another musician who played this special kind of harp...they said it was some sort of ancient kind that is really difficult to play. Well this guy was absolutely PHENOMENAL to watch and went totally nuts on the harp!! They also featured a cellist who blew everyone away, and the drummer did about a 5 minute drum solo that was pretty sweet. There were a couple of outstanding duets some of the vocalists did - they were BEAUTIFUL. I especially loved the harmony parts!! So it was actually pretty cool to see all these fantastic musicians...and probably more so to see that the concert wasn't all about YANNI!!! Sure there were a few of your stereotypical "Yanni" songs that were played, but overall the show was totally not what I expected. There were all types of music played/sung, ranging from opera to latin to pop, and then there was also a lot of dancing. I told Chad during the show that I'm guessing there were a LOT of Dancing with the Stars fans there who were IN HEAVEN!!! :) There were quite a few ladies screaming "I LOVE YOU YANNI!!!!!" in between all the songs, and one lady in particular was up dancing around in the aisle waving her hands all over the place. Very interesting to watch. The audience went nuts at the end when Yanni & his crew came back out for a couple of encore songs, then the show finally ended.

But wait, that's not all folks, as part of my winnings on Amber's blog, we had two "Meet & Greet Passes". Can you even believe it?? So there was a bunch of people who had these backstage passes - we were all led back through security and to this big lounge room where they had all kinds of goodies. Then we hear this lady yelling "Are there any bloggers here??? From the One2one giveaway???". So Chad and I made our way over to her...we were the ONLY ones. She led us back by the dressing rooms and then there was a big whisper fest that went on between her and a couple of other people. We heard them saying, "Yeah, Yanni's not feeling well at all, so he's not going to be able to come out..." I was CRUSHED!!! Okay, maybe I wasn't...just trying to be dramatic. :) But we did get to meet 3 of the other performers: Chloe, Leslie Mills & Ender Thomas. They were all very nice! The girls were pretty quiet - they gave us a quick handshake, then there was Ender...he came bolting over and grabbed a hold of both Chad and I and gave us HUGE bear hugs when we first met him and then again as we were saying goodbye. He seemed like a genuine nice guy! Gotta love those Latin American men, huh?? :) We had a chance to chat with them for a bit about the concert, how long they'd been performing together, whether they preferred Facebook or Twitter, ya know, the important stuff!! I was kinda hoping we would've had the chance to meet the 4th performer, Nathan Pacheco - he had an incredible voice! And that ended our magical evening at Yanni. *Sigh*