‘Blade Runner’ composer and electronic music pioneer Vangelis dies at 79

The music world just lost one of its more influential figures. Deadlinereports Vangelis, the composer behind the scores for Blade Runner and Chariots of Fire, has died in France at the age of 79. He broke ground in music by blending synthesizers with jazz, orchestral work and other styles normally seen at odds with each other. He helped the movie business break away from its dependence on classical or pop soundtracks, and joined artists like Brian Eno and Jean-Michel Jarre in defining both electronic music as a whole as well as sub-genres such as ambient and new-age.

Vangelis is synonymous with sci-fi thanks to his iconic Blade Runner soundtrack, but he was also a proponent of space exploration who produced multiple albums in tribute to major missions. He helped score Carl Sagan’s 1980 Cosmos TV series, wrote Mythodea to celebrate NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission in 2001 and produced a tribute to the Rosetta comet probe in 2016. His last full album, 2021’s Juno to Jupiter, honored its namesake spacecraft right as it was shedding more light on the gas giant. He received NASA’s Public Service Medal in 2003.

The musician was born in Greece in 1943 as …read more