BEAUTIFUL VOICES 013 (VANGELIS SPECIAL EDITION) (78:39) 02 Aug. 2007

Tracklisting:

1. Blush Response (Intro)
2. Prelude
3. Ask The Mountains (feat. Stina Nordenstam)
4. Come To Me (feat. Caroline Lavelle)
5. Movements I From El Greco
6. Twenty Eighth Parallel
7. Pinta, Nina, Santa Maria
8. Rachel's Song (feat. Mary Hopkin)
9. Monastery Of La Rabida
10. Eastern Path
11. Movements V From El Greco
12. Roxane's Veil (Violin: Vanessa Mae)
13. One Morning At Pella
14. West Across The Ocean Sea
15. Eternity
16. Leaving Alexandria
17. Movements X (Epilogue) From El Greco
18. Wait For Me
19. Blush Response (Reprise)
20. Hymne

1,8,18,19 - "Blade Runner" Soundtrack - Esper Edition 2003
2,3,4 - "Voices" 1995
5,11,17 - "El Greco" 1998
6,7,9,14,15 - "1492: Conquest Of Paradise" Soundtrack 1992
10,12,13 - "Alexander" Soundtrack 2004
16 - "Cavafy" Soundtrack - Unofficial Release 2000
20 - "Opera Sauvage" 1979

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"A very good idea, mixing the set with voices of movies (Bladerunner's always be a must, consider one of the best SciFi movies ever, and worth its reputation). The flow keeps going, pretty smooth, tracks are exquisite, overall, the mix is another must-have."

- FauxReveur

Vangelis is a famous Greek composer and keyboardist. He composes and performs mainly instrumental music and film scores. During his career he has flirted with many genres and has proved to be very hard to categorize. His music has been filed as "synthesizer music", "new age", "progressive rock", "Symphonic rock", "Space music", "electronic music", etc. None of those terms is spot on and his output is too varied to catch in one word.

He was born as "Evanghelos Odyssey Papathanassiou" on march 29th 1943 in a small town near Volos, Greece. He started playing the piano at the age of 4 and gave his first public performance of his own compositions at the age of 6.

During his student years he was an important part of a successful Greek pop band called the "Forminx". He moved to Paris in thelate sixties while forming the band "Aphrodite's Child", together with singer Demis Roussos and drummer Lucas Sideras. They scored many hits all over Europe. In 1970 the group broke up and Vangelis started a solo career.

In '75 he moved to London where he set up the legendary Nemo studio that he used to record many of his famous albums and soundtracks. Most legendary are perhaps the Oscar winning score to "Chariots of Fire" and the ever popular score to Ridley Scott's landmark cult film "Blade Runner". In 1987 he left London and subsequently recorded music in Athens ("Direct", "Voices"), Rome ("The City") and Paris ("1492").

Appart from creating music, Vangelis also exercises other arts including painting, which has been doing almost all of his life.

Only recently has Vangelis come out of the limelight as a painter, showing his work on a small number of exclusive exhibitions.

Vangelis avoids public appearances. He rarely gives interviews and concentrates on making music. He hates gossip and tries to stay out of the limelight.

During his career he lived in Greece ('43 / '68), Paris ('68 / '74), London (Nemo studios '74 / '87), Athens ('87 / '91), Paris (Epsilon laboratory 1991 / 1993).

He also spend some months in the USA (1986) and Rome (1989).

Vangelis' last known studio was the "Epsilon Laboratory" in Paris, which was build mostly from glass on the top of a high building in Paris.

Since 1993 Vangelis has apparently been moving around a lot, being labeled some sort of "nomad" by the media. He occasionally returned to Greece, his native country, where he allegedly recorded some of his recent albums (Oceanic, El Greco).

Vangelis uses a technique of recording all tracks simultaneously on tape, using a device especially manufactured for him which he calls the "Direct box".

"He explains his customary method of approach. As soon as the musical idea is there, as many keyboards as possible are connected to the control-desk, which in turn are directly connected to the applicable tracks of the multi-trackmachine. The idea now is to play as many keyboards as possible at the same time.

That way as broad a basis as possible develops which only needs fine-tuning. After that it’s a question of adding things or leaving out things.

The music's flavour is very Byzantine, using Greek orthodox harmonies, church-bells, choir-sounds and more. It's got a faint religious touch and is both austere and rich at the same time - austere because of the generally sparse orchestration, rich because of its deeply felt emotions.

One of Vangelis' main musical strengths, which is the use of rubato (the slight quickening up or slowing down of the tempo of the music to create those subtle effects), is very much in evidence throughout.