VANGELIS – EVANGELOS ODYSSEY PAPATHANASSIOU – Musician

(Valos (Grecia), 1943 – )

Vengelis is the most famous electronic music composer of our day and is a self taught pianist. His career is filled with successes, prizes, and honors. In the 1960s he founded a band, the Formynx who very soon became famous in Greece. In 1968 he moved to Paris and during the period of the Student’s Revolution he formed with Demis Roussos and Louckas Sideras the group Aphrodite’s Child that became famous throughout Europe with the song Rain and Tears. He debuted as a soloist in 1974 with the album Earth. In 1982 he won the Oscar Prize for the soundtrack of Chariots of Fire, and in the same year he composed the soundtrack also for another movie of great success, Blade Runner by Ridley Scott. In 1989 he received the Max Steiner Award as a composer of film soundtracks; in Germany in 1995 he won the prestigious Echo Award for his career as international artist and a Golden Lion award for best soundtrack; in 1992 the Ministry of French Culture Jack Lang conferred on him the title of Knight of the Arts and Literature and the following year he won the Apollo music award from the National Opera of Athens. His composition Hymne of 1979, with a different arrangement, became the unmistakable soundtrack of the first campaign Where there’s Barilla there’s home between 1985 and 1991 created by the Young and Rubicam agency.

Cecilia Farinelli