Description
Chariots of Fire is a 1981 musical score by Greek electronic composer Vangelis for the British film Chariots of Fire, which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Original Music Score.
Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou; (29 March 1943 – 17 May 2022), known professionally as Vangelis, was a Greek musician and composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, and orchestral music. He was best known for his Academy Award-winning score to Chariots of Fire (1981), as well as for composing scores to the films Blade Runner (1982), Missing(1982), Antarctica (1983), The Bounty (1984), 1492: Conquest of Paradise(1992), and Alexander (2004), and for the use of his music in the 1980 PBSdocumentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage by Carl Sagan.
Vangelis began his career working with several pop bands of the 1960s such as The Forminx and Aphrodite’s Child, with the latter’s album 666(1972) going on to be recognized as a progressive–psychedelic rock classic. Throughout the 1970s, Vangelis composed scores for several animal documentaries, including L’Apocalypse des Animaux, La Fête sauvage, and Opéra sauvage; the success of these scores brought him into the film scoring mainstream. In 1975 he set up his new 16-track studio, Nemo Studios in London, which he named his “laboratory”, releasing many solo albums including Heaven and Hell and China among others. In the early 1980s, Vangelis formed a musical partnership with Jon Anderson, the lead singer of progressive rock band Yes, and the duo released several albums together as Jon & Vangelis; he had previously joined Yes as their keyboard player, but left the group before recording any material with them.
In 1980, he composed the score for the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. The soundtrack’s single, the film’s theme, also reached the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart and was used as the background music at the London 2012 Olympics winners’ medal presentation ceremonies.
Video: Vangelis-Chariots Of Fire 1982
Track Listing :
- “Chariots of Fire” (“Titles”) – 3:33
- “Five Circles” – 5:20
- “Abraham’s Theme” – 3:20
- “Eric’s Theme” – 4:18
- “100 Metres” – 2:04
- “Jerusalem” – 2:47 (Hubert Parry, arr. Harry Rabinowitz)
- “Chariots of Fire” – 20:41
Personnel:
- Vangelis — all instruments
- Ambrosian Singers — choir (track 6)
- John McCarthy — choir director (track 6)
- Raphael Preston — engineer
- Raine Shine — engineer
- John Walker — engineer
