Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou

Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou was born in Agria, near Volos, Greece. A musical prodigy who played piano by age four without formal training, he formed the influential progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child with Demis Roussos in Paris in 1967, producing the psychedelic conceptual classic 666.

Establishing his state-of-the-art Nemo Studios in London in the 1970s, Vangelis pioneered electronic orchestral music using banks of analog synthesizers. In 1981, director Hugh Hudson commissioned him to score the British historical drama Chariots of Fire; its triumphant, pulsing electronic theme reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Academy Award for Best Original Score. In 1982, he composed the peerless, noir-dystopian score for Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, which remains one of the most influential film scores in history. Vangelis composed NASA mission soundtracks (Mythodea, Juno to Jupiter) and the 2002 FIFA World Cup anthem, celebrated as a cosmic musical architect.