Yanni's 'Voices' wows audience

YANNI, EnergySolutions Arena, June 17

Take Yanni's uniquely beautiful music and add new breathtaking visual and vocal layers in the form of four young performers and you have Yanni's "Voices," a collaboration that appears to be a hit with Yanni's picky audience.

Leslie Mills is the husky alto. Ender Thomas is the sexy, wavy-locked tenor, and Chloe is the young, vivacious soprano who dares to dance atop Yanni's grand piano.

But Nathan Pacheco carries the crowd with a powerful voice that knows no boundaries. He finds notes that haven't yet been invented and sings them with depth and heart.

Yanni — sans the long hair and mustache — is admittedly taking a huge risk adding vocals and words to his instrumental music that he originally guarded jealously.

But the addition of the voices not only brings renewed interest and color to favorites such as "In the Mirror" and "In the Morning Light," it brightens the stage.

The familiar becomes dear for new reasons.

And judging by the audience response, the choices are good ones.

Chloe can dance and sing flawlessly, and Mills can belt a siren song. Thomas can whip out a flamenco number without breaking a sweat. Pacheco can make women fall in love in three languages.

He had the audience on its feet every time he sang.

The duets between the performers are hot, and occasionally, even Yanni seems stunned at the performances of the relative newcomers.

Only one set seemed a little out of place for traditionalists, and that's the number on the piano top by Chloe and Mills after Chloe drops her robe and proceeds to lay on the piano in various catlike poses while flames lick the sides of the set.

Maybe Yanni is testing the limits here.

Otherwise, the concert was a two-hour package of majestic, wonderful music with plenty for the diehard fan and enough new material to intrigue new ones.

As is usual, Yanni is generous with his stage, letting his drummer, his Hawaiian harpist, his violinists, his bugle horn player and his cello players all take a turn wowing the crowd.

The audience reluctantly allowed the musicians to shut down after two encores.

E-mail: haddoc@desnews.com