Yanni smiled. “The loudest thing on the record will be the silence between the notes.”
And so, in 1993, In My Time was born. The making of the album was an act of radical restraint. Yanni would enter the studio at midnight, when Los Angeles finally fell silent. He lit a single lamp. He sat at a nine-foot Steinway concert grand. There were no click tracks, no computers, no edits. yanni in my time album
The title track, “In My Time,” arrived as a confession. It was the simplest piece on the album—almost childlike in its melody—but beneath it, Yanni wove a subtle, aching harmonic shift. It was the sound of realizing that time is not a river you swim in, but a tide that carries you. You can’t fight it. You can only play through it. When the album was mastered, the label executives were nervous. There were no hit singles. No “Santorini.” No driving 7/8 rhythm. It was just Yanni and his ghosts. Yanni smiled
He sat alone in his home studio in the hills above Los Angeles, staring at the vast banks of synthesizers and mixing boards. He was tired of the voltage. He missed the instrument he had played as a boy in Kalamata, Greece—the acoustic piano. Not the amplified, processed, digitally perfected piano, but the raw, breathing, wooden one. Yanni would enter the studio at midnight, when
Yanni framed that letter.