How Old Is Vangelis? Vangelis Birthday
Vangelis was born on March 27, 1943 and is 81 years old now.
Birthday: March 27, 1943
How Old - Age: 81
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Vangelis - Biography
Popular contemporary composer Vangelis is known for his innovative electronic music. A self-taught musician, he began playing the piano at the age of four and gave his first public performance of his own compositions a mere two years later. After a stint with the progressive rock band Aphrodite's Child in the '60s, Vangelis began his solo career. He has been composing movie soundtracks since the mid-'70s, and first won acclaim and recognition for his Oscar-winning score of Chariots of Fire (1981). Some of his other noted works include the soundtracks for Blade Runner (1982) and 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), the latter of which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.
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.
Excerpts from other interviews mention that Vangelis has been married twice before. In a 1976 interview with Dutch music magazine Oor, the author wrote that Vangelis had a wife named Veronique Skawinska, a photographer who had done some album art work for Vangelis. An interview in 1982 with Backstage music magazine suggests that Vangelis had previously been married to a singer named Vana Verouti, who had performed vocals on some of his records, performing for the first time with him on La Fête sauvage and later on Heaven and Hell.
