Vangelis, the self-taught, Oscar-winning Greek composer who piloted a dashboard of synthesizers through the New Age and into the cinema, most notably with catchy, cosmic scores for Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner, has died aged 79.
Chariots of Fire (1981) was Vangelis’s first studio feature, and it won him an Academy Award – besting John Williams’s traditionally orchestral Raiders of the Lost Ark. Chariots of Fire also won an Oscar for best picture, for its crowdpleasing story of English runners representing their country in the 1924 Olympic Games, and opened with an iconic image of the young men running in slow-motion along a beach.
