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Saturday, March 29, 2025


Happy Birthday: Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou (29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis, was a Greek musician, composer, and producer of electronic, progressive, ambient, and classical orchestral music. He composed the Academy Award-winning score to Chariots of Fire (1981), as well as for the films Blade Runner (1982), Missing (1982), Antarctica (1983), The Bounty (1984), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), and Alexander (2004), and the 1980 PBS documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.

Born in Agria and raised in Athens, Vangelis began his career in the 1960s as a member of the rock bands the Forminx and Aphrodite's Child; the latter's album 666 (1972) is recognised as a progressive-psychedelic rock classic. Vangelis settled in Paris, and gained initial recognition for his scores to the Frédéric Rossif animal documentaries L'Apocalypse des Animaux, La Fête sauvage, and Opéra sauvage. He released his first solo albums during this time, and performed as a solo artist. In 1975, Vangelis relocated to London where he built his home recording facility named Nemo Studios and released a series of successful and influential albums for RCA Records, including Heaven and Hell (1975), Albedo 0.39 (1976), Spiral (1977), and China (1979). From 1979 to 1986, Vangelis performed in a duo with Yes vocalist Jon Anderson, releasing several albums as Jon and Vangelis. He collaborated with Irene Papas on two albums of Greek traditional and religious songs.

2 comments:

Stephen said...

I've never googled "them" so I didn't realize Vangelis is a dude. Loved his work in Cosmos. (I assumed it was a band, like Kraftwerk...)

CyberKitten said...

I was buying his stuff (on cassette) from the early years - LOVING electronic music as I do. I really need to update my collection... [muses] After listening to 'Albedo 0.39' multiple times I could rattle off LOTS of information about the Earth... Ah, fun GEEK times........ [lol]