In Memory of Vangelis: A Genius of Our Time

Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou known professionally as Vangelis, was a Greek musician, composer, and producer of electronic, progressive, ambient, and classical orchestral music. He was best known for his Academy Award-winning score for Chariots of Fire (1981), as well as for composing scores for the films Blade Runner (1982), Missing (1982), Antarctica (1983), The Bounty (1984), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), and Alexander (2004), and for the use of his music in the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan. Vangelis began his career working with several pop bands of the 1960s such as The Forminx and Aphrodite’s Child, with the latter’s album 666 (1972) going on to be recognized as a progressive-psychedelic rock classic. Throughout the 1970s, Vangelis composed scores for several animal documentaries, including L’Apocalypse des Animaux, La Fête sauvage, and Opéra sauvage; the success of these scores brought him into the film scoring mainstream. In 1975 he set up his new 16-track studio, Nemo Studios in London, which he named his “laboratory“, releasing many solo albums on which experimented with music and concepts, including Heaven and Hell and China among others. In the early 1980s, Vangelis formed a musical partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of progressive rock band Yes, and the duo released several albums together as Jon & Vangelis. He also collaborated with Irene Papas on two albums of Greek traditional and religious songs. n 1980, he composed the score for the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. The soundtrack’s single, the film’s theme, also reached the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and was used as the background music at the London 2012 Olympics winners’ medal presentation ceremonies. He also composed the official anthem of the 2002 FIFA World Cup held in Korea and Japan. In his last twenty years, Vangelis collaborated with NASA and ESA on music projects Mythodea, Rosetta, and Juno to Jupiter, which was his 23rd and last solo studio album in 2021. Having had a career in music spanning over 50 years and having composed and performed more than 50 albums, Vangelis is considered to be one of the most important figures in the history of electronic music, and modern film music. He was known for using many electronic instruments in a fashion of a “one-man quasi-classical orchestra“ composing and performing on the first take. Reference: