page_title: Vangelis
section_title: Film and television
hierarchical_section_title: Vangelis / Career / 1981–2002: Mainstream success / Film and television
caption_attribution_description: English: Jack Lowden, Vangelis, and James McArdle watch the Olympic Torch Relay from the Gielgud Theatre, 26 July 2012
context_page_description: Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, known professionally as Vangelis, is a Greek musician and composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, and orchestral music. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning score to Chariots of Fire, as well as for composing scores to the films Blade Runner, Missing, Antarctica, The Bounty, 1492: Conquest of Paradise, and Alexander, and for the use of his music in the 1980 PBS documentary Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.
  Vangelis began his career working with several popular bands of the 1960s such as The Forminx and Aphrodite's Child, with the latter's album 666 going on to be recognized as a progressive-psychedelic rock classic. Throughout the 1970s, Vangelis composed music scores for several animal documentaries, including L'Apocalypse des Animaux, La Fête sauvage and Opéra sauvage; the success of these scores brought him into the film scoring mainstream. In the early 1980s, 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 as Jon & Vangelis.
context_section_description: In 1980, Vangelis agreed to record the score for Chariots of Fire (1981); he accepted because "I liked the people I was working with. It was a very humble, low-budget film." The choice of music was unorthodox as most period films featured orchestral scores, whereas Vangelis' music was modern and synthesiser-oriented. It gained mainstream commercial success which increased Vangelis' profile as a result. The opening instrumental title piece, "Titles", later named "Chariots of Fire – Titles", was released as a single which reached No. 1 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for one week after a five-month climb. The soundtrack album was No. 1 on the Billboard 200 for four weeks and sold one million copies in the US. In March 1982, Vangelis won an Academy Award for Best Original Music Score, but refused to attend the awards ceremony partly due to his fear of flying. He turned down an offer to stay in a stateroom aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 for a boat crossing. Vangelis commented that the "main inspiration was the story itself. The rest I did instinctively, without thinking about anything else, other than to express my feelings with the technological means available to me at the time". The song was used at the 1984 Winter Olympics.
  The success of Chariots of Fire led to further offers for Vangelis to score films, but he avoided becoming "a factory of film music". In 1981, he scored the documentary film Pablo Picasso Painter by Frédéric Rossif. It was the third such score by Vangelis as he'd previously scored documentaries about Georges Mathieu and Georges Braque. In 1982 he composed the score of Missing directed by Costa-Gavras, which was awarded the Palme d'Or and gained Vangelis a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. Other Vangelis film soundtracks produced during this time include Antarctica for the film Nankyoku Monogatari in 1983, one of the highest-grossing movies in Japan's film history, and The Bounty in 1984. He declined an offer to score 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  In 1981, Vangelis collaborated with director Ridley Scott to score his science fiction film, Blade Runner (1982). Critics have written that in capturing the isolation and melancholy of Harrison Ford's character, Rick Deckard, the Vangelis score is as much a part of the dystopian environment as the decaying buildings and ever-present rain. The score was nominated for a BAFTA and Golden Globe award. A disagreement led to Vangelis withholding permission for his recordings to be released, so the studio hired musicians dubbed the New American Orchestra to release orchestral adaptations of the original score. After 12 years, Vangelis' own work was released in 1994 but is considered incomplete as the film contained other Vangelis compositions that were not included. In 2007, a box set of the score was released to commemorate the film's 25th anniversary, containing the 1994 album, some previously unreleased music cues, and new original Vangelis material inspired by Blade Runner.
  In 1992, Paramount Pictures released the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise, also directed by Ridley Scott, as a 500th anniversary commemoration of Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World. Vangelis's score was nominated as "Best Original Score – Motion Picture" at the 1993 Golden Globe awards, but was not nominated for an Academy Award. However, due to its success Vangelis won an Echo Award as "International Artist Of The Year", and RTL Golden Lion Award for the "Best Title Theme for a TV Film or a Series" in 1996.
  Vangelis wrote the score for the 1992 film Bitter Moon directed by Roman Polanski, and The Plague directed by Luis Puenzo. In the 90s, Vangelis scored a number of undersea documentaries for French ecologist and filmmaker, Jacques Cousteau, one of which was shown at the Earth Summit. The score of the film Cavafy (1996) directed by Yannis Smaragdis, gained an award at the Flanders International Film Festival Ghent and Valencia International Film Festival
caption: Vangelis in 2012 with stars of the stage adaptation of Chariots of Fire
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