Vangelis, the Greek composer and musician whose synth-driven work introduced big drama to movie soundtracks together with Blade Runner and Chariots of Fireplace, has died aged 79. His representatives mentioned he died in hospital in France the place he was being handled.
Born Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou in 1943, Vangelis gained an Oscar for his 1981 Chariots of Fireplace soundtrack. Its uplifting piano motif turned world-renowned, and reached No 1 within the US charts, as did the accompanying soundtrack album.
Principally self-taught in music, Vangelis grew up in Athens and shaped his first band in 1963, known as the Forminx, taking part in the pop music of the time: uptempo rock’n’roll, sweeping ballads and Beatles cowl variations, with Vangelis supplying organ strains.
They cut up in 1966, and Vangelis turned a author and producer for rent, working for different musicians and contributing scores for Greek movies. Two years later, he struck out for Paris to additional his profession, the place he shaped the prog rock quartet Aphrodite’s Baby with Greek expats, together with Demis Roussos. Their single Rain and Tears was a success throughout Europe, topping the French, Belgian and Italian charts and reaching the UK Prime 30.
After they cut up – Vangelis deeming the world of economic pop “very boring” – he returned to scoring movie and TV. Turning down an invite to switch Rick Wakeman on keyboards in Sure, he moved to London and signed a solo take care of RCA Information: his LPs Heaven and Hell (1975) and Albedo 0.39 (1976) every reached the UK Prime 40, and the previous was used to soundtrack Carl Sagan’s widespread TV collection Cosmos. The reference to Sure was lastly accomplished later within the decade, when he teamed with the band’s Jon Anderson for the duo Jon and Vangelis, whose debut album went Prime 5.
Vangelis had continued his movie rating work all through the Seventies, nevertheless it was within the 80s that this reached its business heights. Chariots of Fireplace turned inextricable from Vangelis’s timeless theme, and the music turned synonymous with slow-motion sporting montages. “My music doesn't attempt to evoke feelings like pleasure, love, or ache from the viewers. It simply goes with the picture, as a result of I work within the second,” he later defined.
His rating to Blade Runner is equally celebrated for its evocation of a sinister future model of Los Angeles, the place “replicants” and people dwell awkwardly alongside each other, via using lengthy, malevolent synth notes; saxophones and luxurious ambient passages improve the movie’s romantic and poignant moments. “It has turned out to be a really prophetic movie – we’re residing in a sort of Blade Runner world now,” he mentioned in 2005.
Later within the decade he scored the Palme d’Or-winning Costa-Gavras political drama Lacking, starring Jack Lemmon; the Mel Gibson and Anthony Hopkins drama The Bounty, and the Mickey Rourke-starring Francesco. He labored once more with the Blade Runner director, Ridley Scott, on 1992 movie 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and elsewhere throughout the 90s, soundtracked Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon and documentaries by Jacques Cousteau.
Vangelis drew on Greek instrumentation alongside the standard orchestras utilized in movie scoring on Oliver Stone’s 2004 classical epic Alexander.
His most up-to-date rating was for El Greco, a 2007 Greek biopic of the Renaissance painter. The Greek artist, who moved to Spain and bought his nickname there, was a lot admired by Vangelis, who composed albums in 1995 and 1998 that had been impressed by and named after him.
Regularly celebrated for his evocative Chariots of Fireplace theme, Vangelis was additionally commissioned by sporting our bodies to soundtrack main occasions, together with the 2000 Olympic Video games in Sydney, the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea, and the 2004 Olympics in Athens. He additionally wrote ballet scores and music for stage productions of Medea, The Tempest and different performs.
Solo releases remained regular alongside his commissioned work, and infrequently included collaborations with vocalists resembling Paul Younger.
A fascination with outer house discovered voice in 2016’s Rosetta, devoted to the house probe of the identical title, and Nasa appointed his 1993 piece Mythodea (which he claimed to have written in an hour) because the official music of the Mars Odyssey mission of 2001. His last album, 2021’s Juno to Jupiter, was impressed by the Nasa probe Juno and featured recordings of its launch and the workings of the probe itself in outer house.
Amongst these paying tribute to Vangelis was Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who hailed “a pioneer of digital sound”.
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