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Optimystique
''Optimystique'' is the debut studio album by Greek keyboardist, composer, and producer Yanni, released in 1980 independently. It was re-released in 1984 by Varèse Sarabande and in 1989 by Private Music. Liner notes Track listing Personnel *All music composed and produced by Yanni *Yanni – Synthesizers and Keyboard instrument, Keyboards *Ernest LaViolette – Drums and Percussion *Tom Sterling – Bass guitar on "Twilight" *Dugan McNeill – Bass guitar on "The Chase" *Tony Matsis – Bouzouki on "Strings" *Bruce Kurno – Harps Production *Produced by Jerry Steckling and Yanni *Executive Producers: Mark MacPherson and Tom Paske *Engineered by Jerry Steckling *Assistant Engineer: Chopper Black *Recorded at Cookhouse Studios and Sound 80, Minneapolis, Minnesota *Mastered by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering, Los Angeles References External linksOfficial Website
* {{Authority control Yanni albums 1984 albums ...
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Yanni
Yiannis Chryssomallis ( el, Γιάννης Χρυσομάλλης; born November 14, 1954), known professionally as Yanni ( ), is a Greek-American composer, keyboardist, pianist, and music producer. Yanni continues to use the musical shorthand that he developed as a child, blending jazz, classical, soft rock, and world music to create predominantly instrumental works. Although this genre of music was not well suited for commercial pop radio and music television, Yanni received international recognition by producing concerts at historic monuments and by producing videos that were broadcast on public television. His breakthrough concert, ''Live at the Acropolis,'' yielded the second best-selling music concert video of all time. Additional historic sites for Yanni's concerts have included India's Taj Mahal, China's Forbidden City, the United Arab Emirates' Burj Khalifa, Russia's Kremlin, Puerto Rico's El Morro castle, Lebanon's ancient city of Byblos, Tunisia's Roman Theatre of C ...
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Yanni Albums
Yiannis Chryssomallis ( el, Γιάννης Χρυσομάλλης; born November 14, 1954), known professionally as Yanni ( ), is a Greek-American composer, keyboardist, pianist, and music producer. Yanni continues to use the musical shorthand that he developed as a child, blending jazz, classical, soft rock, and world music to create predominantly instrumental works. Although this genre of music was not well suited for commercial pop radio and music television, Yanni received international recognition by producing concerts at historic monuments and by producing videos that were broadcast on public television. His breakthrough concert, ''Live at the Acropolis,'' yielded the second best-selling music concert video of all time. Additional historic sites for Yanni's concerts have included India's Taj Mahal, China's Forbidden City, the United Arab Emirates' Burj Khalifa, Russia's Kremlin, Puerto Rico's El Morro castle, Lebanon's ancient city of Byblos, Tunisia's Roman Theatre of C ...
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Private Music
Private Music was an American independent record label founded in 1984 by musician Peter Baumann as a "home for instrumental music". Baumann signed Ravi Shankar, Yanni, Suzanne Ciani, Andy Summers, Patrick O'Hearn, Leo Kottke, and his former bandmates, Tangerine Dream. The label specialized in New age music but made a sharp turn to the mainstream by signing Taj Mahal, Ringo Starr, Etta James, and A. J. Croce. Its albums were distributed by BMG (the label's earliest recordings having been distributed by RCA), which bought Private Music in 1996. History In 1989, Baumann hired veteran music executive Ron Goldstein of Warner Bros. Records as Private Music's president and CEO. Goldstein moved the offices from New York City to Los Angeles, hiring Karen Johnson to expand the label's image. Baumann recruited the well-respected, mainstream A&R executive Jamie Cohen. Visual image was important to Goldstein, who handpicked art director Melanie Penny, previously of Virgin Records and ...
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Keys To Imagination
''Keys to Imagination'' is the second studio album by Greek keyboardist and composer Yanni, released on the Private Music label in 1986. Background & production In an interview with ''Cymbiosis'', Yanni said that he often spent 12–15 hours a day producing the album. Yanni also stated that his favorite part about producing the album was to activate "up to six or seven lavekeyboards" and that "the most simple sounds on ''Keys to Imagination'' are made with at least two or three keyboards." Critical reception In a review by Backroads Music/Heartbeats, "Yanni's first Private Music release is a true masterpiece of dramatic synthesizer music. His music is lusty and brilliant, richly melodious and memorable, full of passion & life as befits his Greek heritage. One of the ultimate car-stereo albums, Yanni's flamboyant, superb style of compositions makes ''Keys to Imagination'' some of the most extravagant, hyperspace music we know." Mark Jacobs of ''Cymbiosis'', praised the album, writ ...
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Instrumental Music
An instrumental is a recording normally without any vocals, although it might include some inarticulate vocals, such as shouted backup vocals in a big band setting. Through semantic widening, a broader sense of the word song may refer to instrumentals. The music is primarily or exclusively produced using musical instruments. An instrumental can exist in music notation, after it is written by a composer; in the mind of the composer (especially in cases where the composer themselves will perform the piece, as in the case of a blues solo guitarist or a folk music fiddle player); as a piece that is performed live by a single instrumentalist or a musical ensemble, which could range in components from a duo or trio to a large big band, concert band or orchestra. In a song that is otherwise sung, a section that is not sung but which is played by instruments can be called an instrumental interlude, or, if it occurs at the beginning of the song, before the singer starts to sing, an in ...
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Percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excluding zoomusicological instruments and the human voice, the percussion family is believed to include the oldest musical instruments.''The Oxford Companion to Music'', 10th edition, p.775, In spite of being a very common term to designate instruments, and to relate them to their players, the percussionists, percussion is not a systematic classificatory category of instruments, as described by the scientific field of organology. It is shown below that percussion instruments may belong to the organological classes of ideophone, membranophone, aerophone and cordophone. The percussion section of an orchestra most commonly contains instruments such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, tambourine, belonging to the membranophones, and cy ...
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Hollywood film industry, and its sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabriel Valley to it's east. It covers about , and is the county seat of Los Angeles County, which is the most populous county in the United States with an estim ...
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Harp
The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has a number of individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or concerts. Its most common form is triangular in shape and made of wood. Some have multiple rows of strings and pedal attachments. Ancient depictions of harps were recorded in Current-day Iraq (Mesopotamia), Iran (Persia), and Egypt, and later in India and China. By medieval times harps had spread across Europe. Harps were found across the Americas where it was a popular folk tradition in some areas. Distinct designs also emerged from the African continent. Harps have symbolic political traditions and are often used in logos, including in Ireland. History Harps have been known since antiquity in Asia, Africa, and Europe, dating back at least as early as 3000 BCE. The instrument had great popularity in Europe during the ...
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Bouzouki
The bouzouki (, also ; el, μπουζούκι ; alt. pl. ''bouzoukia'', from Greek ), also spelled buzuki or buzuci, is a musical instrument popular in Greece. It is a member of the long-necked lute family, with a round body with a flat top and a long neck with a fretted fingerboard. It has steel strings and is played with a plectrum producing a sharp metallic sound, reminiscent of a mandolin but pitched lower. There are two main types of bouzouki: the ''trichordo'' (''three-course'') has three pairs of strings (known as courses) and the ''tetrachordo'' (''four-course'') has four pairs of strings. The instrument was brought to Greece in the early 1900s by Greek refugees from Anatolia, and quickly became the central instrument to the rebetiko genre and its music branches. It is now an important element of modern Laïko pop Greek music. Etymology The name ''bouzouki'' comes from the Turkish word , meaning "broken" or "modified", and comes from a particular re-entrant tuning ca ...
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Dugan McNeill
Dugan or Duggan ( ga, Uí Dhúgáin) is an Irish surname derived from Ó Dubhagáinn. History A family of the name Dugan had its territory near the modern town of Fermoy in north Cork, and were originally the ruling family of the Fir Maighe tribal group which gave its name to the town. They also claimed descent from Mug Ruith, the legendary magician of the Fir Bolg. They ceded pre-eminence to the O'Keeffe family in the eleventh century, but remained powerful in the area. Along with the other Fir Maighe families they lost their power when the Normans conquered the territory in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By the 12th century, family names or surnames had become well established in Ireland in the lands of the Sogain where an illustrious Dugan family held prestige and power due to their descent from the druid Mog Rutih. Some historians believe that with the change over to Christianity, the druids carried on with their profession of "filí" or seers. These "filí" wer ...
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Bass Guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and scale length, and typically four to six strings or courses. Since the mid-1950s, the bass guitar has largely replaced the double bass in popular music. The four-string bass is usually tuned the same as the double bass, which corresponds to pitches one octave lower than the four lowest-pitched strings of a guitar (typically E, A, D, and G). It is played primarily with the fingers or thumb, or with a pick. To be heard at normal performance volumes, electric basses require external amplification. Terminology According to the ''New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', an "Electric bass guitar sa Guitar, usually with four heavy strings tuned E1'–A1'–D2–G2." It also defines ''bass'' as "Bass (iv). A contraction of Double bas ...
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Keyboard Instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings. Today, the term ''keyboard'' often refers to keyboard-style synthesizers. Under the fingers of a sensitive performer, the keyboard may also be used to control dynamics, phrasing, shading, articulation, and other elements of expression—depending on the design and inherent capabilities of the instrument. Another important use of the word ''keyboard'' is in historical musicology, where it means an instrument whose identity cannot be firmly established. Particularly in the 18th century, the harpsichord, the clavichord, and the early ...
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