Who is Vangelis?
Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (born March 29, 1943) is a Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient and neoclassical music, under the artist name Vangelis. He is best known for his Academy Award winning score for the film Chariots of Fire, and scores for the films Blade Runner and 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
Vangelis began his pro- fessional musical career working with several popular bands of the 1960s such as The Formynx and Aphrodite's Child, with the latter's album, 666, going on to be recognized as a psychedelic "classic". In the 1970s, 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 under the alias Jon & Vangelis. Towards the end of the 70s, Vangelis composed music scores for several animal documentaries, including Opéra sauvage, the success of these scores moved Vangelis into the eyes of well known filmmakers. In 1981, he composed the score for the Oscar winning film Chariots of Fire. The soundtracks 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 47 years, writing and composing over 40 albums, Vangelis is generally regarded by music critics to be one of the greatest composers of electronic music of all time.
Musical style and compositional process
As a musician, Vangelis relies heavily on synthesizers and other electronic approaches to music. Synthtopia, an electronic music review website, stated that Vangelis' music could be referred to as "symphonic electronica" because of his use of synthesizers in an orchestral fashion. Vangelis' music and compositions have also been described as "...a distinctive sound with simple, repetitive yet memorable tunes against evocative rhythms and chord progressions."
For films, Vangelis stated that he would begin composing a score for a feature as soon as he sees a rough cut of the footage. In addition to working with synthesizers and other electronically based instruments, Vangelis also works with and is a conductor to orchestras. For example, in the Oliver Stone film Alexander, Vangelis conducted an orchestra that consisted of various classical instruments including sitars, percussion, finger cymbals, harps and duduks.
Vangelis uses a technique of recording all tracks sim- ultaneously on tape, using a Zyklus MIDI Performance System. He explains his customary method of approach. As soon as the musical idea is there, as many keyboards as possible are connected to the control-desk, which in turn are directly connected to the applicable tracks of the multi-trackmachine. The idea now is to play as many keyboards as possible at the same time. That way as broad a basis as possible develops which only needs fine-tuning. After that it's a question of adding things or leaving out things.
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