What Is Yanni's Net Worth?
Yanni is a Greek pianist, keyboardist, composer, and music producer who has a net worth of $50 million. Yanni has earned his net worth through his many performances as a pianist and his many albums and tours. What's more, two of his albums ("Dare to Dream" and "In My Time") earned Grammy nominations, and he has also written film scores, as well as the music for an award-winning British Airways television commercial. Having encountered many cultures in his travels, Yanni's music is considered to reflect his "one world, one people" philosophy.
Early Life
Yanni was born Yiannis Hryssomallis on November 14, 1954, on the Greek island Kalamata. He showed an interest and talent for music at an early age, but instead of enrolling him in music school, Yanni's parents encouraged him to follow his own muse and learn to play the piano in his own way. This turned out to be a good decision as Yanni uses even today the musical shorthand that he developed as a child, mixing jazz, classical, soft rock, and other world music to compose original works. The self-taught pianist began playing at age six. At the age of 14, Yanni set a Greek national record in the 50-meter freestyle swimming competition. He moved from Greece to the United States in 1972 to attend college.
Yanni in 1997 (Photo by Forrest Anderson/Getty Images)
Career
Even though he attended the University of Minnesota and earned a B.A. in Psychology, Yanni has never walked away from music. On the contrary, he continued his personal study of piano and other keyboard instruments and joined a Minneapolis-based rock group called Chameleon, which toured regionally and cut several self-released albums.
In 1980, he embarked on a solo career, recording and releasing an album of his own material called "Optimystique." The album attracted listeners' attention, and it was re-released by Atlantic Records in 1984 and then again by Private Music in 1989. Yanni formed a band in 1987 and toured in 1988 with an ensemble of pianists/singers. During this time, Yanni wrote motion picture soundtracks for 1988's "Steal the Sky" and "Heart of Midnight," 1989's "I Love You Perfect," and 1990's "She'll Take Romance, "When You Remember Me," and "Children of the Bride." He gained visibility due to his appearances in "People" magazine and on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." In 1992, Yanni released "Dare to Dream," his first album to be Grammy-nominated. He followed this up with his second Grammy-nominated album, "In My Time," in 1993.
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More albums followed, and Yanni rose to international fame thanks to his concerts held at historic monuments and his videos broadcast on public television. He made a breakthrough with the concert "Yanni Live at the Acropolis," which became the second-best-selling music video of all time. "Acropolis" was Yanni's first live album in which he utilized his core band along with a full 60-piece orchestra. Yanni had risked $2 million of his own personal fortune with no financial backing for the production of "Acropolis."
Other of Yanni's notable concerts at historic sites include India's Taj Mahal, where, in 1997, he became one of the few Western artists permitted to perform and record there. The two events there formed the live album and video "Tribute." He also played China's Forbidden City and the United Arab Emirates' Burj Khalifa, among others. After negotiating the strenuous demands of playing these two spots, along with his break-up with long-time love Linda Evans in 1998 and then completing a lengthy world tour after that, Yanni went on hiatus. He revealed later that he had become depressed and returned to Greece for a stint to live with his parents before he traveled solo around the world. He didn't do any interviews for two years. In 2000, he came back from hiatus and released "If I Could Tell You." It sold 55,000 copies in its first week and landed at #20 on the "Billboard" charts, becoming Yanni's highest debut to date. In 2003, he released "Ethnicity." In November 2010, he released "Mexicanisimo," a tribute to Mexico through his collaborative interpretation of its folk music.
In February 2011, Yanni released "Truth Of Touch," his first studio album of new original material in eight years. In April 2012, he recorded and released two outdoor concerts on the UNESCO World Heritage Site the Castillo El Morro in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The concerts were broadcast on PBS, resulting in Yanni's tenth collaboration with the organization. His seventeenth studio album "Inspirato" was released in March 2014. The following year, he released a soundtrack for the Chinese documentary "Hexi Corrido." In the fall of 2015, Yanni performed two concerts on the grounds of the Egyptian pyramids and the Great Sphinx of Giza, his first performances in Egypt. The concerts concluded with fireworks and a video broadcast from International Space Station commander Scott Kelly. The concert was recorded in 4K HD for broadcast on PBS. In 2016, Yanni released "Sensuous Chill," his eighteenth studio album. It was built around synthesizers and electronic sounds. Yanni performed his new single "When Dreams Come True," a minimal piano-led piece, for the first time in February 2019 at the Winter at Tantora Festival in Saudi Arabia, another UNESCO World Heritage Site. Later that year, he released another single, "Blue." In August 2020, Yanni released a studio album called "In His Purest Form." The album contained a solo piano performance, his first piano solo on an album since 1993's "In My Time."
Personal Life
Yanni has never been married, but he has had several high-profile relationships over the years, including with actress Linda Evans. They were together from 1989 to 1998. For many years, it was believed he had no children, but Yanni revealed in April 2014 that he had a daughter named Krystal Ann, who was 32 years old at the time it was revealed she existed.
