Composer Hans Zimmer on the magic of writing film scores, and his first North American tour dates in 7 years
- Hans Zimmer, famous for his film scores, from The Lion King to The Dark Knight, rarely appears live on stage, but he’s changing all that with a world tour
- He talks about the secrets of writing a great film score, putting on a rock and roll show, and picking the right people to work with
For generations, German composer Hans Zimmer’s film scores have been the soundtrack to magic movie moments in The Lion King, Gladiator, the Dark Knight trilogy, and most recently, Dune and Dune: Part Two. This year, Zimmer will bring his award-winning scores to the live stage.
His Hans Zimmer Live tour, which sold out in Europe, comes to Dubai in May, before moving to the United States and Canada in September, marking the first time Zimmer has performed in North America in seven years.
The last time, as some fans may recall, was a 2017 performance at the Coachella festival in California.
Over Zoom from New York, Zimmer says he was inspired after “refusing to get onto a stage for 40 years” because of something his friends, Pharrell Williams and the Smiths’ Johnny Marr, told him.
“You have to look your audience in the eye. You can’t hide behind the screen forever. You know, you owe it to your, you know, audience,” he says they told him. And after Coachella, he realised, “I can do this,” he says.
At Hans Zimmer Live, there is no conductor, no sheet music in front of each musician, and not a single frame from any of the films he’s referencing.
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“I come from rock and roll and I believe in putting on a show,” he says. “People stay with us because we give them an experience which they’ve never had before … Life is hard. Life is tough these days. And people worked hard to go to pay for these tickets, so we better pull off a show that is absolutely worthy of them coming and seeing us.”
The North American leg of Hans Zimmer Live starts in Duluth, Georgia, on September 6 and includes stops in Hollywood, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; New York; Baltimore; Boston; Montreal; Vancouver; Toronto; Minneapolis; Chicago; Fort Worth, Texas; Denver; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Oakland, California, and Seattle.
Zimmer says attendees can expect a diverse audience. “I’ve looked out at the audience and there’s a mother with her grandson sitting next to a guy with a mohawk, sitting next to a man in a business suit, sitting next to another bunch of, you know, bikers,” Zimmer says.
“So, it’s not just multigenerational, it’s multicultural.” And in more ways than one: Zimmer’s orchestra is from Ukraine.
“Two weeks after the invasion started, we managed to get about half of them out of Odesa,” he says. Lebo M, who sings The Lion King theme, was a political refugee from South Africa when Zimmer first met him. Pedro Eustache, his woodwind player, is from Venezuela, “and he thinks he can probably never go back home”, says Zimmer.
“I have this very, very international group of players and … part of what makes them such emotionally committed musicians is that they all have a story to tell you.”
Hans Zimmer Live, which has been recently rearranged, includes works from Gladiator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Interstellar, The Lion King, The Last Samurai and Dune.
You need to be committed. You need to be honest. You can’t be sentimental
“Each piece is connected with the adventure of actually creating it, the adventure of actually making that movie, the adventure of the collaboration, the adventure of, you know, ‘How did we get here?”, he says. “Where did this journey start? And how can we make sure that it never ends?
“Each one of those movies is painted in colour and affected by what is going on around us. And they have all been extraordinary journeys.”
All of these films and their scores are vastly different, but Zimmer’s idiosyncratic approach and arrangements should be considered the connective tissue. That, and a certain je ne sais quoi that makes an effective – and affecting – score.
“You need to be committed. You need to be honest. You can’t be sentimental,” he says of a successful score.
“The other thing is, it’s the people who are performing it. Because if you think about it, the last actors that really get hired, the last actors that perform in a film, are the musicians. So I’m very careful about picking the people I work with.”
