Biography
New age music star Vangelis was born Evangelos Papathanssiou
on March 29, 1943 in Greece. At age four he began playing
the piano, an instrument at which he excelled throughout his
school years. During his 20s Vangelis, as he was nicknamed,
played keyboards in a series of Greek rock Bands, one of which --
the progressive rock quartet Aphrodite's Child -- earned
a moderate European following in the late '60s. When the group
disbanded in 1970, Vangelis began a solo career, though
Vangelis continued working with former Aphrodite's Child vocalist
Demis Roussos, who later turned up on several of
Vangelis' solo albums.
Vangelis' solo effort was a soundtrack to the French film
Apocalypse des Animaux; its success paved the way for future
soundtrack work, which became Vangelis' focus over the next
several decades. In the mid- 1970s he left Paris -- where
Aphrodite's Child had relocated in the late 1960s -- for London,
which became his adopted home. Between soundtrack
projects Vangelis recorded synth-laden instrumental new age
albums which earned him a devoted following worldwide. By the
early 1980s he became a household name, when his scores for Carl
Sagan's Cosmos project and the hit movies Blade Runner
and Chariots of Fire won critical acclaim and several
international awards.
Today, Vangelis remains a popular new age musicians; his latest
album, Portraits (So Long Ago So Clear), was released in 1997.