Vangelis

Vangelis is the professional name of Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, a Greek composer from Βόλος, Greece, born in 1943 and active until his death in 2022. He is associated with electronic, ambient, classical, experimental, instrumental, new age and soundtrack music, and is widely identified with synthesiser-led composition and film scoring.

Early work and bands

He begins his professional career in the 1960s after piano lessons, working with Greek bands including The Forminx and Aphrodite’s Child. With Aphrodite’s Child, he contributes to the album 666, which becomes known as a psychedelic classic. He is also part of The Forminx, one of the groups linked to his early development.

Film, television and documentary music

Vangelis becomes especially known for music for film and television. His credits include scores for Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, Missing, Antarctica, 1492: Conquest of Paradise and Alexander, and his music is also used in the PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan. During the 1970s, he writes scores for several animal documentaries, including L'Apocalypse des Animaux, La Fête sauvage and Opéra sauvage, and these works help bring his music into the mainstream of film scoring.

Collaborations and solo work

In the early 1980s, Vangelis forms a partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of Yes, and they release several albums together as Jon & Vangelis. Across a career spanning more than 70 years, he composes and performs more than 50 albums. He is known as one of the major figures in the history of electronic music.

Awards and honours

His score for Chariots of Fire wins him an Academy Award for Best Original Score. He also receives the Max Steiner Award in 1989, the Apollo music award from Friends of the Athens National Opera Society in 1993, World Music Awards in 1996 and 1997, and NASA’s Public Service Medal in 2003. France appoints him a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1992, promotes him to Commander in 2017, and makes him a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2001. He is named an Honorary Doctor by the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2008, and the American Hellenic Institute gives him its Hellenic Heritage Achievement Award in the same year. A minor planet, 6354 Vangelis, is also named after him.

Style and background

He is largely self-taught, begins composing at the age of three, and does not rely on substantial knowledge of written musical notation. He studies painting at the Athens School of Fine Arts, and his musical work combines electronic instrumentation with orchestral and new age elements. His labels include Voight Kampf and Spheric B.V.