Summer 2004
New, Nifty, & Noteworthy
Changing the world, one life at time:
Yanni takes center stage at U alumni celebration
Photo by Tom Foley
At the U of M Alumni Association (UMAA) centennial celebration in May, a slight, famously dark-maned composer-musician bowed before a cheering audience from the stage of Northrop Auditorium.
Yanni Chryssomallis ('76, psychology), robed and hooded in maroon and gold academic regalia, had not played a single note. He held in his hand an honorary doctorate of humane letters, just awarded by University President Bob Bruininks.
In his speech that evening, and in an interview earlier in the day, Yanni remembered "sitting in Northrop, not really speaking English, trying to understand what the professor was talking about. It was the first class I ever took at the University of Minnesota: psychology 1001, 8:00 in the morning, in January of '73."
The class was a revelation, he says. Indeed, he recalls that he learned English poring over his textbook, reading the same paragraphs over and over, translating in his head with the aid of a Greek-English dictionary that he kept always by his side.
Since those days, Yanni has returned to Northrop several times to perform with the Minnesota Orchestra and with his own band and orchestra. He has performed his signature brand of global-inflected music on stages worldwide, for millions of adoring fans. His recordings have gone platinum several times over. He's what is known in the entertainment world as a phenomenon.
Known as "John" to his classmates and professors of 30 years ago, Yanni says his world opened up when he arrived at Territorial Hall from his native Kalamata, Greece. In his Greek classrooms, just beyond the nurturing reach of his open-minded parents, "teachers [had been] autocratic and taught by decree." At the U, he says, "I loved the professors and how they approached learning."
One of those professors, Neal Viemeister (psychology), remembers Yanni as an accomplished student: "I tried to talk him into graduate school, but he had his heart set on music," he says.
From the research lab to the international stage
Yanni had thought he might use his psychology degree to help people: "I was interested in understanding myself and understanding people, what made us tick," he says. "But I don't think I was cut out to be a therapist. When the time came for me to imagine myself sitting and listening to people's problems, I realized that I wasn't going to do that very well."
Music offered him the creative freedom he craved. To this day, Yanni inhabits a world with few boundaries, straddling nations, genres, and musical idioms to create and perform his Grammy-award-winning compositions. He may have abandoned psychotherapy as a profession, but he is widely credited by fans for music that reaches across world cultures to heal and revitalize.
"I think if through your art you can change one person for the better, it's a big accomplishment," Yanni says.
As a freshman, Yanni ("John the Nobody," he muses) supported himself washing dishes at the Campus Club. "I was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. I think I am proof that anything is possible. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as you love it. If you love it, you have passion; passion is the fuel."
And that passion was ignited in, of all places, Viemeister's psychology research lab. "We were trying to create new ways of doing things," Yanni says. "I was learning that I am a creative human being, and that is what interests me: the new stuff, the challenges of not knowing something, going after it, learning it, devising new ways of understanding. I suddenly realized that music had all that."
Creating outside the box
Yanni's idiosyncratic compositions—which he says often come to him late at night, after long periods of deep introspection—appear on the page as a private and inscrutable musical language, the hieroglyphics of a freewheeling creative sensibility that both abhors and transcends formal rules of composition.
A self-taught pianist and prolific composer, Yanni credits a music-filled childhood for his seemingly bred-in-the-gut musical voice. He never learned to read music, never even took a music class—but he did sneak into music practice rooms on campus to play piano. "The music voice inside me was getting pretty loud," he says, and could not be ignored. "So wherever there was a piano and it was late at night, I would sit and just play.
"I didn't want anyone telling me what to do. I just knew that I loved [music], and it called on me to go do it." And the call came from another continent, across oceans.
"It was my father's dream to come to America," said Yanni in his UMAA speech. "And it was my mother's dream to become a singer and entertainer. They say that some kids live out their parents' dreams. I got the first half right. I don't know about the singing part."
Mendoza new Chicano studies head
Photo by Bridget Brown
Bilingual menus, billboards, and street signs. Spanish scrawled across windows of colorful storefronts. Mexican mercados. Spanish-language graffiti, radio, cable TV. Street fairs and theatrical events where English is a distant second language.
This is the new Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. And it's where Texas-born writer, cultural critic, poet, literary scholar, and public citizen Louis Mendoza is making his home as the new chair of Chicano studies.
Mendoza admits to being surprised by the "texture and color" of the community he discovered on his first visit here. "It was a lot more vibrant than I expected," he says. "I thought, ‘Wow, it's exciting to be here.'"
It's especially exciting, he says, to be here at a time of such change and challenge for Minnesota. (According to the 2000 census, Minnesota's Hispanic/Latino population is the fastest growing minority group in the state. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of people self-identifying as Hispanic/Latino swelled from 53,884 to 143,382. The actual number is probably much higher.)
Chicano/Latino history and culture "are threads in the U.S. fabric that were not always recognized or appreciated," says Mendoza. "Today, communities everywhere have to acknowledge the presence. We are the nation's largest minority. What does it mean to relate to us? What contributions have we made? What is the strong emergence of the Latino community in Minnesota going to mean for us? How can we be fully appreciated as partners in this democracy?"
Helping students and communities grapple with such large questions will be a priority for Mendoza. He hopes to revitalize Chicano studies in part by broadening its appeal to "students from across campus—to show them that taking more Latino studies courses is in their own best interest as educated citizens. We have to build a curriculum that is inviting to everyone, and also meets the needs of people who are interested in giving back to or working with the Latino community."
Mendoza also is committed to active engagement with the community beyond the University: "We're here to think proactively, to create solutions, to create a pipeline to the University, so that you don't have a segment of the population that is out of the education loop. And that's going to mean being in partnership with people throughout the educational system, K-12 on.
"Meanwhile, I think it's important to do outreach to Latinos across the country, so that Minnesota isn't only serving the needs of the local Latino community, but is also seen as a beacon of hope for others to come here and go to school, to be perceived as a welcoming place."
Mendoza earned his Ph.D. in English at the University of Texas (UT), Austin, and comes to the University from UT, San Antonio, where he was an associate professor of English and associate dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts. He is the author of numerous articles and three books, the most recent titled Crossing Into America: The New Literature of Immigration. His forthcoming book, The Jail Machine: Raúl Salinas and the Poetics of Pinto Transformation, will be published next year.
Hymn by U prof and alum performed at Reagan funeral
A 90-voice chorus from all branches of the military performed a hymn by University of Minnesota professor and poet Michael Dennis Browne and internationally renowned composer and alumnus Stephen Paulus for a world audience on Friday, June 11, during the funeral for President Ronald Reagan.
An Army conductor called Paulus the week of the funeral and asked that he Fed-Ex 90 copies of the hymn to the military choir, Browne says.
Paulus composed "Pilgrim's Hymn" in 1997, and Browne wrote the text. The piece is the finale to Paulus' and Browne's one-act opera "‘The Three Hermits,"‘ which premiered that same year. The hymn has been described as a moving anthem that brings listeners to tears.
"Pilgrim's Hymn" is popular in its own right and has sold more than 60,000 copies worldwide, Browne says. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir is among two dozen choirs that have recorded it. Twin Cities audiences heard the hymn in October 2001 at "Elegy," a benefit concert at Orchestra Hall for victims of the September 11 attacks.
Of the hymn's inclusion in Reagan's funeral, Browne says, "For a poet who writes books and sells a few copies, this is serious.
"It's honoring the passing of a fellow human being, a man who was once the most powerful in the world. To contribute any eloquence to such an occasion is a great privilege."