Released March 31, 1992 | Length 59:05 Release date 31 March 1992 Genres Instrumental, New Age | |
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Nominations Grammy Award for Best New Age Album Similar In My Time, Out of Silence, In Celebration of Life, Chameleon Days, Optimystique | ||
Dare to Dream is the eighth studio album by Keyboardist Yanni, released on the Private Music label in 1992. The album peaked at #2 on Billboard's "Top New Age Albums" chart and at #32 on the "Billboard 200" chart in the same year. It went gold within two months of its release and was nominated for a Grammy.
Contents
- Yanni once upon a time
- Critical reception
- Personnel
- RIAA certification
- Dates
- Cities
- Set list
- The band
- Tour production
- Miscellaneous
- Songs
- References
The album was followed by the sell-out, 65-city Dare to Dream concert tour which challenged audiences "not to be afraid to dream".
"Dare to Dream", says Yanni, "comes from a realization that not only people don't go after their dreams, they are often afraid to dream at all. If we don't dare to dream, we can't shape our future".
Yanni once upon a time
Critical reception
In a review by Johnny Loftus, "Dare to Dream is Yanni's first new material in three years and finds the new age composer fitting his unflinchingly romantic arrangements into tighter song structures. The surging synth backgrounds, insistent piano lines and general grandiosity that mark Yanni's sound are still intact. But tracks like "A Love for Life" or "Nice to Meet You" harness that famously epic energy in smaller stables. This tactic works especially well on the latter track, which is led by the wail of an electric fiddle. Elsewhere, Yanni plucks the heartstrings with "In the Mirror" and "So Long My Friend" – two weepy ballads that cascade like sheets of rain on a lonely city street. The seven-minute "You Only Live Once" becomes the only really epic piece on Dare to Dream, and it's pleasant enough. However, it illustrates the main drawback to Dream, which is Yanni's reliance on the shifting sands of synthesizers to do his bidding. As his rousing 1990 Live collaboration with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra proved, live instruments only accentuate the humanity of Yanni's music instead of deadening it like his fleets of keyboards have a tendency to do. This is a minor issue, though. Since artificial instrumentation has always been part of Yanni's highly successful sound, fans of the composer likely won't be put off by their prominence here."
Personnel
(Personnel as described in CD liner notes.)
RIAA certification
Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) Gold and Platinum database entries:
Dates
April 4 – June 20, 1992
Cities
65 cities
Set list
Selections from Reflections of Passion, In Celebration of Life and Dare to Dream
The band
This 2 hour and 15 minute concert is performed completely live and showcases the broad range of Yanni's music through a unique marriage of acoustic and electronic sound. Yanni and two additional keyboardists (Bradley Joseph and Julie Homi), are backed by a rhythm section headed by Charlie Adams on drums, with Michael Bruno on percussion and Osama Afifi on bass, and a string section featuring Charlie Bisharat and Karen Briggs on violin, and Sachi McHenry on cello.
Tour production
Miscellaneous
The music "Once Upon a Time" was adopted by TVB as the background music of world weather from July 28, 1991 to December 31, 2009.
Songs
1Once Upon a Time3:53
2A Love for Life5:08
3Nice to Meet You5:38