Vangelis, the Greek composer known for the soundtracks of films such as ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘Chariots of Fire’, died at the age of 79, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis reported this Thursday (05.19.2022).
“Vangelis Papathanassiou is no longer with us,” the prime minister tweeted. “The world of music has lost the [artista] international Vangelis “.
A pioneer of electronic music, this autodidact was inspired by space exploration, nature, futuristic architecture, the New Testament or the student movement of May 1968 in France. Although he is often typecast as a “new age” composer, the complexity of his work makes it difficult to label him so lightly.
His score for “Chariots of Fire” won an Oscar in 1982, when it competed with John Williams’ score for the first Indiana Jones film. Although he achieved fame for his work on celluloid, his record production goes much further.
“It is with great sadness that we announce that the great Greek Vangelis Papathanassiou has passed away late on the night of Tuesday, May 17,” his lawyer was quoted as saying by the Greek news agency ANA on Thursday.
According to Greek media, Vangelis died of the coronavirus in France, where he lived for certain seasons. “For us Greeks, this means that he began his great journey on the Chariots of Fire. From there he will always send us his notes,” Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter.
His soundtracks also include Costa-Gavras’s ‘Missing’, Roman Polanski’s ‘Moons of Gall’ and Oliver Stone’s ‘Alexander the Great’. (AFP, DW, EFE)
–
