Vangelis

Vangelis biography

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou ( ; born 29 March 1943) is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock and orchestral music, under the artist name Vangelis (English pronunciation: ). He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, composing scores for the films Blade Runner, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander, and the use of his music in the PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.

Vangelis began his professional musical career working with several popular bands of the 1960s such as The Forminx and Aphrodite's Child, with the latter's album 666 going on to be recognized as a psychedelic "classic". Throughout the 1970s, Vangelis composed music scores for several animal documentaries, including L'Apocalypse Des Animaux, La FíȘte sauvage and Opéra sauvage; the success of these scores brought him into the film scoring mainstream. In the early 1980s, Vangelis formed a musical partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of progressive rock band Yes, and the duo went on to release several albums together as Jon & Vangelis. In 1981, he composed the score for the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire. The soundtrack's single, "Titles", won Vangelis the Academy Award for Best Original Music Score and also reached the top of the American Billboard.

In a career spanning over 50 years, writing and composing more than 52 albums, Vangelis is regarded as one of the greatest composers of electronic music of all time.

Biography

Formative years

Vangelis was born 29 March 1943, near Volos, Greece. Largely a self-taught musician, he reportedly began composing at the age of four. He refused to take traditional piano lessons, and throughout his career did not have substantial knowledge of reading or writing musical notation. He studied painting-an art he still practises-at the Academy of Fine Arts in Athens. When he was six, Vangelis's parents enrolled him at a specialist music school in Athens. Vangelis said in an interview with Life, when asked about his lack of ability to read music:

Work in bands

In the early 1960s he was one of the founders of pop group The Forminx (or The Formynx), which became popular in Greece. Based in Athens, the five-piece band played a mixture of cover versions and their own material, the latter written mostly by Vangelis (with lyrics by DJ and record producer Nico Mastorakis) but still sung in English. The Forminx released nine hit singles and a Christmas EP before disbanding in 1966 at the peak of their success.

Around the time of the student riots in 1968, Vangelis founded progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child together with Demis Roussos, Loukas Sideras and Anargyros "Silver" Koulouris. After an unsuccessful attempt to enter the UK, they found a home in Paris where they recorded their first single, a hit across much of Europe called Rain and Tears. Other singles followed, including two albums, which, in total, sold over 20 million copies. The record sales led the record company to request a third album, and Vangelis went on to conceive the double-album 666, based on Revelation, the last book in the Bible. One of the many remarkable features of this album is Irene Papas's guest participation (vocal on "Infinity"). Tensions between members during the recording of 666 eventually caused the split of the band in 1971, but the album was still released in 1972. Despite the split, Vangelis has since produced several albums and singles for Demis Roussos, who, in turn, contributed vocals to the Blade Runner soundtrack.

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