Posthumous | Vangelis, the New Age composer who found New Age boring

Vangelis passed away. The Greek godfather of New Age music won an Oscar for his film score for Chariots of fire and scored a world hit with ‘Conquest of paradise’.

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Vangelis gave his first piano concerto when he was six, although he never learned to read music. At that time he was still called Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassiou – a very long and very Greek name which, as an adult, he later correctly judged to have limited international appeal.

In his first band, Forminx, the Greek played Beatles covers, enhanced with organ. In the mid-1960s he exchanged Greece for Paris and founded the prog rock band Aphrodite’s Child with his compatriot Demis Roussos. the single ‘Rain and tears’ from 1968, with the voice of Demis Roussos and Vangelis on flute, was a hit in several European countries, including Belgium. The band broke up in 1972. Like Demis Roussos, Vangelis built up a successful solo career in the 1970s. Vangelis mainly focused on film music – and on the synthesizer.

In 1982 he got an Oscar for the soundtrack van Chariots of Fire and beat John Williams, who was nominated for the Indiana Jones movie Raiders of the lost ark† A year later he was nominated for a Golden Globe with his soundtrack for Ridley Scotts Blade ­runner.

Scott hired him again in the 90s to write the music for 1492: conquest of paradisea film about Christopher Columbus setting foot in America. Conquest of paradise became a worldwide hit.

space travel

Vangelis also wrote film music for Bitter moon by Roman Polanski and Alexander by Oliver Stone. He composed music for ballet and theater as well as for football: the official anthem of the 2002 World Cup is written by him. Also known is his collaboration with Yes singer Jon Anderson, with whom he made several albums in the 1980s. As Jon and Vangelis they scored their biggest hits with ‘I’ll find my way ­home’ in ‘I hear you now’.

Last year he released an album at the age of 78, Juno to Jupiter† It became an ode to NASA’s space mission to the planet Jupiter, on which the Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu can be heard. Nasa converted Jupiter’s electromagnetic waves into sound waves, which Vangelis incorporated into his music. The Greek often had his music inspired by space travel. This is how the album refers ­Rosetta from 2016 to the ESA space probe of the same name. He also wrote music for Cosmos, the documentary series by Carl Sagan. The love for the cosmos was clearly mutual: in 1995 an asteroid was named after him.

Vangelis had a mystical connection with music. In a rare interview withThe Telegraph in 2005 he called himself “a radar that picks up notes, a human decoder for people to understand.” When confronted by the newspaper with his nickname, “the godfather of New Age music,” he unflatteringly called New Age “a style that allows untalented people to make very boring music.”

Little was known about his private life, except that he thought marriage was silly, had no children and did not drink alcohol or take drugs. He was even vague about where exactly he lived: Athens, London or Paris. In any case, he died yesterday in a hospital in Paris, where he was being treated for corona. He turned 79.

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