We continue our tribute and retrospective for the singular recording artist and film composer VANGELIS, who joined the immortals in May 2022 at age 79.
EVANGELOS ODYSSEAS PAPATHANASSIOU was born in Greece in 1943. He showed a natural early talent for music and was entirely self-taught. In his 20s he was the keyboard player in the hugely successful Greek progressive rock band APHRODITE’S CHILD, but he chose to abandon a conventional pop music career and began working as a film composer in Greece.
In the early 1970s he moved to Paris, where he worked with French film director FREDERIC ROSSIF creating lush electronic scores for animal documentaries. They became so popular they helped establish him as a solo recording artist. In 1975 he relocated to London in and built Nemo Studios, where he created his Academy Award-winning electronic score for CHARIOTS OF FIRE, and classic scores for BLADE RUNNER, MISSING, ANTARCTICA, THE BOUNTY, 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE, ALEXANDER, the 1980 PBS documentary series COSMOS, and many others.
His gift for opulent melodies and a retrogressive style based on 19th century Romantic classicism was balanced by his early embrace of the tools and techniques of electronic music—a highly effective combination of old and new.
Vangelis never learned to read or write music, but he and his engineers pioneered a virtuoso working method and technical setup that allowed him to compose, play, and record simultaneously, often in one “take.” On this transmission of HEARTS of SPACE, we celebrate the second half of his stellar career, on a program called VANGELIS Part 2.
= We'll feature music from his solo albums SPIRAL, OCEANIC, NOCTURNE, JUNO TO JUPITER, and ROSETTA;
= and film scores for OPERA SAUVAGE, 1492 CONQUEST OF PARADISE, and BLADE RUNNER.
It’s Part 2 of our posthumous retrospective of VANGELIS, on this transmission…of Hearts of Space.
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