ARTICLES


From Keyboards 61, Dec-92, "Interview" topic
by Christian Jacob
Article translated by Paulo Mouat


THE NAVIGATIONS OF VANGELIS

Vangelis Papathanassiou has understood, for a long time now, that music is the best vessel to discover new worlds.
Tireless voyager, he explores the archipelagoes of today's music, the solar winds and the fragrances of sounds.
And in 1992, at last, he meets Christopher Columbus...
Whilst others find nothing more than a continent, Vangelis enjoys himself to sail the islands and to multiply routes.
A complex wake, unattainable, where solitary driftings alternate with bold collective adventures, and large manoeuvers with expression of a refined elegance.

Vangelis, greek-born, has grown up with a piano.
Of his country, he keeps the light and spirituality, poetry affected by nostalgia, the love of a millenary tradition that survives in the songs of shepards and peasants, far away from the dubious ditties of the Plaka, with its industrial larding-pins and rikiki bouzoukis.
This luminous Greece, that today has the delicate strength of a mirage, is brought back to life by Vangelis, notably in his collaborative works with Irene Papas, "Odes" (1981) and "Rhapsodies" (1986), or in the instrumental textures subtly enveloping popular chants superbly performed.
His mediterranean roots also undoubtedly provided Vangelis with generous temperament and lyrical edge, which come forth so clearly in his improvisations, fulgurant intuition and instinctive orchestrations, so characteristic of his style.

From lyre to synthesizer

Vangelis the greek comes also from one other country: pop music.
In the 60s, he had his first successes with the band Phormynx (the lyre).
But the colonel dictatorship, in 1968, makes Greece an impossible and dangerous country and, like many, Vangelis goes to exile.
He creates Aphrodite's Child in Paris with the singer Demis Roussos.
It would be an international success, particularly with the double album "666".
The band breaks apart in 1971 and hence Vangelis starts his solo career.
But he would never refuse the interaction of other musicians performing together, and in the course of his albums he was joined with musicians that would provide him with the performance of rare instruments or simply to add the grain of their voice.
Vangelis gives proof also of astonishingly skillful methods of work: he enjoys the solitary experimentations of a synthesist as much as his collaborations, his talent thus meeting that of other creators.

In 1974 we truly believed he would join Yes as the next keyboardist, and the symphonic rock pioneering band would even do several rehearsals with him.
This would be an unsuccessful endeavour, but Vangelis established a solid friendship with Jon Anderson: the result is a series of extraordinary albums, "Short Stories" (1979), "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" (1981), "Private Collection" (1983) and, in 1990, "Page of Life".
The listener cannot be but sensible to the great partnership of these two sacred monsters, that share the best of their talents in compositions that mix humour, virtuosity and perfect effectiveness.
The voice of Jon Anderson would also accompany the synthesizers of Tangerine Dream ("Legend") and, more recently, of Kitaro.
Of his pop roots, Vangelis also kept the taste for a music that swings without any complexes and his latest album, "The City" (1990) gives a good picture, with rhythms at times heavy and sounds of distorted guitars.

Without a doubt we could trace to his years of learning this essential component of the talent of Vangelis: the sense of melody, so rare in electronic music, that releases from the sound texture a memorizable line that we can sing.

Music for images

A man of collaborations, Vangelis should meet with the images people.
Frédéric Rossif was the essential person: he allowed a new alliance between music and film, and he took care himself of the soundtracks that would bring glory to Vangelis, "L'Apocalypse des Animaux" (1971), "La Fête Sauvage" (1976), "Ignacio (Entends-tu les chiens aboyer?)" (1977), "L'Opéra Sauvage" (1978) are the sonic landmarks of a new way of filming the animal world and of creating poetry, a lyrical drama.
Music of strong emotions and graceful moments, sounds of extreme delicacy and notes that touch every key of our intimate sensitivities: in Rossif's animal filming, words are superfluous.
We find Vangelis also on the soundtracks for "Cantique des Créatures" (devoted to painting) and "Nuremberg à Nuremberg" (history of nazism).

From the small screen to the big screen is a small step, but one of giant for Vangelis.
The soundtrack for Hugh Hudson's "The Chariots of Fire" (1981) receives an Oscar in Hollywood and secures a place on the very select club of the composers of soundtracks.
Vangelis only followed his natural instinct, let his sense of melody run free, to blend the emotion in his music to that of the film.
"Blade Runner" by Ridley Scott, in 1981, allowed him to create, besides various strong themes, the obsessive urban atmosphere of a futuristic Los Angeles, humid and misty.
A superb work, still largely unreleased.
This would also be the case of "Missing" (Costa Gavras, 1982) and "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1984), but not "Antarctica" (Kurahara, 1983) nor "1492" (R. Scott, 1992), that are available on album.
A compilation, "Themes" (1989), gathers the memorable bits of these soundtracks.
With "Lune de Fiel [Bitter Moon]" (Polanski, 1992), "1492" is thus the more recent work of Vangelis for the cinema, symphonic and lyrical to taste, with the visionary power necessary to this illuminated sailor that was Columbus.

If Vangelis endows film with the quintessence of his talent, and augments tenfold the poetry and the emotional prowess of the image by melodic themes that haunt the spectator for very long, the film will itself influence his music.
We could say that all albums with Jon Anderson and others like "See You Later" (1980) and "The City" (1990) are soundtracks of possible films, with their own incidents, sketches of scenery, fragments of sonic ambiences, references to cinema classics, or even their very noise tracks that recall the golden age of [polar].
Other connections could be the primary role, particularly with "Mask" (1985) and other recent soundtracks, of powerful electronic music with the frequent accompaniment of wagnerian choirs: the combination releases a symphonic force, having nothing to envy from the acoustic orchestra.

The synthesizer without the technique

But we wouldn't be able to reduce the work of Vangelis solely to its guidelines, pop music, the collaborations, the work with images...
Contrary to most electronic musicians that have followed a specific aesthetical orientation along their entire career (were they prisoners of their machines?), Vangelis innovates, experiments, moves forward: in short, he explores and discovers.
Without a doubt because he is a musician rather than really a synthesist, because he refuses the computerized interfaces that deprive the musician of part of his creativity.
Vangelis has never bowed before the technical mystification.
Paradoxically, he is one of the few that explored deepest the range of musical creation possibilities offered by synthesizers.
"Heaven and Hell" (1975), "Albedo 0.39" (1976) and "Spiral" (1977) explore some of the main paths of "classical" electronic music, gliding or sequenced, but always stating an unquestionable originality in comparison to the other gurus of the genre.

In 1978, with "Beaubourg," Vangelis adventures himself in the electroacoustic abstraction, creating the most anti-commercial music ever, but with an enchanting beauty: seldom was the sound of the synthesizers thus materialized in visual forms, combining and crossing themselves, fleeing and mirroring.
This visionary hymn to modernity has nothing to envy from the works of the IRCAM [Institut de Recherches et Coordination d'Acoustique/Musique, Music and Acoustics Research and Coordination Institute] or from the GRM [Groupe de Recherches Musicales, Music Research Group], and he also has humanity.
"Invisible Connections" in 1985, on the prestigious Deutsche Grammophon label, shows the renown of Vangelis in the world of modern music.
But instead of closing himself, he opens new doors, creates an imaginary orient with "China" (1979), explores the poetry of minimalism with "Soil Festivities" (1984) and rediscovers, in 1987, the pleasure of playing the synthesizers live, while the refinement of studio techniques and the explosion of music software and computers deeply influence the methods of creation of the electronic musician.

Vangelis is, perhaps above all else, the power of an intuition that managed to surpass the barriers between idea and execution: it's the weight of the hands, the instinct of the gesture, the grain of sound, the chords of the CS80 that react by osmosis to the whims of the composer, the recording live, the first take that generates the strong and exact emotion, the absolute sincerity of a music that mirrors the soul rather than the machine.

Christian Jacob What were, for you as a composer, the main emotions, the dominant feeling in "Blade Runner" and "1492"?
Vangelis Emotions vary, it is not easy for me to describe them to you.
What I experience on all these films, like "Blade Runner," "1492," "Chariots of Fire," etc, is the responsibility and fatigue of taking a big personal risk because we are never sure of the final outcome of a film.

Christian Jacob Has it happened, in the course of your career, your music influencing directly the shooting of the film?
Vangelis Music, in itself, exerts an absolute power over the image.
Thus, the editor must pay close attention to the music and sound in general.

Christian Jacob You have worked with Frédéric Rossif for a very long time.
What do you recall from this collaboration?
Vangelis I'll always have very fond memories of friendship and pleasurable moments.
I am sad that he is no longer among us.

Christian Jacob You have also composed the music of "Nuremberg à Nuremberg".
What is your feeling as man and musician regarding this film?
Vangelis Ever since the dawn of mankind, nothing has really changed.
On certain occasions, human beings always do the same mistakes.
What a waste!

Christian Jacob Do you have specific methods of composition?
Vangelis The methods come to me naturally.
I do nothing but obey.
Only possible solution: spontaneity.

Christian Jacob One of your traits is the quite powerful and expressive synthesizer orchestration.
How do you imagine the whole sound of your pieces?
Vangelis To have a satisfactory result regarding the expression and musicality of synthesizers, we must make a constant effort, because these instruments were not built with this in mind.
Not because of insufficient technology, but because of a narrow and commercial state of mind on the part of the manufacturers, that leads them to build always up-to-date instruments.

Christian Jacob Do you rework a fragment in the course of the various production stages or do you try to preserve the primal emotion and spontaneity of a "live take"?
Vangelis I prefer the live take, because it generally has more emotion.
I rarely rework material.
But an important question arises thus: how, and with what system, can we get a direct result, ever since the computer used by most of all musicians imposes its own rhythm and its own interpretation of the music? We have built this monster and, with its help, we have made other monsters, and we love these monsters, and we become ourselves a monster! It is because of this that, along the years, I developed a personal technique that frees me of the computer and its details.
Nowadays, we are more inclined to appreciate more the airplane rather than the bird, the submarine rather than the fish, and the computer rather than the human.
I wish musicians would regain confidence in the possibilities and virtues of humans, which are, by far, undoubtedly better than those of all machines built until today.
Therefore, each musician shall find his own technique and his own way of doing things, so as to achieve a result more closer to nature than to fashion.
You have certainly noticed that fashion is quickly outdated.
In truth, computers are useful for technical tasks, but insufficient and dangerous for artistic use.
I will thus forever support "live performance" in studio and in concert: What a pleasure!

Christian Jacob Would you like to write for an acoustic orchestra?
Vangelis Writing for a symphonic orchestra has a particular charm.
I have done it on several occasions in the past and I will continue doing it.
But that requires plenty of patience and time for notation and orchestration.
Moreover, it has all the limitations regarding rehearsals, preparation for recording, not to mention astronomical costs...

Christian Jacob Your music was associated for a very long time to the very specific context of the Nemo Studios in London.
Why did you move to Paris? Could you present the overall philosophy of your new studio?
Vangelis The studios I build, like Nemo Studios or the Epsilon studios in Paris, are places conceived to ease the work and to study with as much depth as possible the vast universe of sound, nature and of the universal law, three terms that mean the same thing.
This said, I would like to add that there is a fundamental difference between Nemo and Epsilon.
Since I found unbearable to be separated from the exterior world, given that I worked in a closed space without being able to enjoy daylight (as most other studios throughout the world), I built my new studio so as to enjoy the day, the night, the stars, the birds, and the seasons: that is to say, a completely translucent space.

Christian Jacob You are always faithful to the warm sound of the Yamaha CS80.
What is your opinion on current synthesizers?
Vangelis The birth of the CS80 has given me a great hope over the development of synthesizers, due to its unique capabilities in the realm of musical expression.
Tough luck, it is the only synthesizer to have this expressiveness since 1975.
No synthesizer from any manufacturer was ever conceived with this in mind ever since this period.
Too bad!

Christian Jacob You have already expressed yourself on the lack of expressiveness of current synthesizers.
What would be, for you, the important developments to adopt?
Vangelis Better keyboard, better velocity, vibrato and control of the speed of vibrato for each key.
Preferably not a single button that does everything, but many buttons that do little.
These are only a few examples to better the musical result, without neglecting two common things: our time and our mental sanity.
You must not believe that I am against technology.
On the contrary, I have always thought that it is a wonderful tool that we must use when it helps us.
Unfortunately, today the situation is inverted.
We become more and more enslaved to technology, and therefore we get mediocre results, despite appearances.

Christian Jacob In retrospective, of your albums, what are those more achieved or those which had the most unexpected results?
Vangelis I don't know, only time can answer that question.

Christian Jacob Your two albums with Irene Papas have a very peculiar emotion.
In your attachment to your greek roots, which are the most essential values that you uphold?
Vangelis Of what Greece do you want me to talk about? Of the luminous, scientific, philosophical and metaphysical Greece, or of the commercial Greece, of the bouzouki for tourists? Of course, it is the luminous Greece that corresponds to my essential values.

Christian Jacob What are your current projects? Can we expect someday the integral soundtrack for "Blade Runner"?
Vangelis My only project is to go on serving music.
Regarding the second question, I think you should find your answer in the music industry.

Christian Jacob What balance do you take from your big concert at Rotterdam and are you going to repeat the experience?
Vangelis The experience at Rotterdam was not a concert, but a show or, if you will, an event conceived to be seen and heard by a large audience in open air (two to three hundred thousand spectators, or maybe even more...).
To organize and synchronize this kind of event, because we had sound, lighting and a multitude of effects, we used the computer.
This was an activity that interested me more as spectator than as creator.
Why have I done it? To live the experience and confirm this analysis.
Will I repeat it? Who knows?

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