A guy from Germany who stubbornly
wanted to play music... Hans Zimmer is a crazy genius. He's just one of nicest people I've ever met
and a great film composer ! ...Never thought about a career, never
written a note of music for money... I don't think of few words to define Hans
the way I know him, Hans is a genius ! Somebody who's concerned with making sure
that we'll have orchestras forever, and trying to support my musician friends
and try to discover new people and... Never growing up ! A lot of the producers go
"Oh God, No Hans, can you write the thing you did..." "So you get an Oscar and..."
And he says "No, we'll gonna do all differently..." And everybody's scared,
and in the end it's a hit, And in the end, everybody copies Hans' music ! He's this guy I met 37 years ago... And with an incredible career. I play music. That's what I do! Hans first mentioned to me I think
about eight years ago, that he would really like to do some
concerts of his music. And then I didn't hear anything. He was always too busy,
or gone off the idea... But earlier this year, he said "I've decided again
to take time off writing", "I'd really like to do some concert,
can you be involved?" And I said "Yeah, really happy
to be involved!" I start the show off with my friends
Richard Harvey and Nick Glennie-Smith. My life in music really
started with them. Thirty years ago, they had this
wonderful studio called the Snake Ranch, which was a great name, and I could go
and make noise in the middle of the night, and I learnt more from both Richard and Nick
than from anybody else. I've known Hans for a long time.
We've done so many projects together, and we're just very good friends
who enjoy working together. There's a lot of respect going both ways,
which is really nice... I first met Hans when I was
working as a recording engineer, at a place called Riverside Recordings
in London, And he came in very briefly, Long haired, leather jackets, and he was like the
synthesizers boy in town. I was like a piano player, Hammond player,
synth player. he had this little box called
a Roland Microcomposer. and then press "record", and get a sound
on his Prophet, something magic would happen. I've known
Hans for 35 years. times have changed ! We had two common factors, we were both with Air Edel agency, mainly doing TV advertisement music
at that time, but also we were both friendly with
Stanley Myers, the composer. We both worked with Stanley,
we both co-wrote. In those days, we didn't have computers.
if you wanted to get a job, You did a great demo. And Hans will do great demos with
his Prophet-5, and his Modular Moog, Modular Roland, I got my jobs by playing flute, clarinet,
piano, acoustic guitar... So, I do tracks all by myself,
and he does tracks all by himself, But we'd help each other out sometimes, So we worked together
quite a bit. There's a spirit of modern friendship, it's brotherhood in music and
brotherhood personally. I think, from the first time
we worked together, an unwritten formula happened... Just inspired by the music in this
period and how we worked together. He has selected some of his
dearest friends, and some of his closest
musical collaborators, arranged his music for orchestra,
for drums, for choir, with band and soloists. And combined that with a
spectacular light show, and a very very personal and private
storytelling session from him, I think it's brilliant
idea actually. Because people are gonna get to know him
the way we know him, who have worked with him for
so many years, as an intimate, funny,
intelligent, brilliant man, and not just as an
untouchable God of film music! - Here's Guthrie.
- Yeah! How are you Guthrie? We've been rehearsing here for
I guess two weeks, as a band, and then we put the
orchestra in, about three rehearsals with
the girl drum line. Oh hang on a second !
Something's going in right now... I arrived this morning with 25
instruments. My taxi driver said: "Have you got all the
instruments for the orchestra?" I said "no I'm playing them all myself". He said "Oh really, that's unusual". I said "I know, that's how I get hired
on good value for money!" It's much less tiring rehearsing
for these shows, than actually working on films, because when you're working on films
you're stuck in the studio, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week
for about 4-5 months on the project... Here you know you get to be
with friends, we get to be out, and to be able to actually play
our instruments, and not just be sitting there
trying to write cues and stuff. so actually it's much more fun and
it's much more enjoyable, definitely! If you sound bad,
you might want to talk to him. Why do I sound so bad? Practice? ok... Part of what I wanted to do... In a funny way, I wanted to show... Not the composer sitting at
the grand piano. Not the conductor. Ask the orchestra:
"do you want a conductor?" And they said: "Honestly?
We play better without one." "We know what we're doing." I wanted to show this
camaraderie of musicians. Yeah, something like that! Where do I not have to move? When Hans said he was going to do
a major show, like a retrospective of his work, I thought it was going to be big orchestra,
and a few other things... But this is more like a band. This is getting quite loud in there. Lot of guitars, bass, lot of drums,
lot of keyboards... And it feels like a band. We are very prepared.
Everything was written out. The band learned it and we always
had a pre-record of the orchestra, while we were rehearsing. As people come in,
we take out pre-records. That's the same when you do
recording session with the orchestra, everything's already on ProTools. So you're replacing element. We're working out how to do the parts
that we're replacing. Obviously we're listening to the
orchestra of ProTools, Because they're not here. Hang on a second,
it is bar #50. Can we just play it from bar #48? So we're just getting ourselves together,
so to hear the orchestra, we can listen to the sounds we're supposed
to be replicating, and get our acts together. And then we put the orchestra and
the choir together, on the 8th and the 10th, and then we do the shows,
and then we go home! And it was the only way to do it! Because if we had had seventy-two people
in the room on the first day, I would have died! There's no
way I could have controlled it. And like this it was slowly
building up a sound. we're interpreting it in a new way. I love Crimson Tide. Again I was quite involved
in that with Hans. As he says in the concert,
there's a big thing about whether Jerry Bruckheimer
and Don Simpson, the producers, would let Hans use a choir because
they didn't think it was the right way to go. But Tony Scott backed him up, in the end kicked them out and
said "Let Hans get on write some music". And he wrote some
very beautiful music for that, and I guess it's one of the
nicest pieces we play in the show. It's very good.
Well they're all nice! We have a lot of people on the stage. The first time I met Aleksey and Tristan, They had a string trio called "Triology". Ennis Morricone introduced me to them
and literally said: "These are the only people
that can play my music!" I thought that was a pretty
good recommendation. So Hans Zimmer was there, thinking:
"I want those guys as well" "I want them to play my music!" So he invited us to work
with him on some movies, the first movie with it together
was El Dorado, and in Spanglish as well, and then some
years later he called me, to work on the Sherlock Holmes movies, which was a lot of fun and we really
created a special sound, and a crazy sound world for that. Yolanda Charles and Mary Scully,
the electric bass and acoustic bass, Mary has played on pretty much
everyone of my scores I recorded in England, I met Yolanda through Dave Stewart, Whatever happened to Angels and
Demons is entirely Satnam's doing! He picked himself 6
rather amazing percussionists, who happen to all be beautiful! Easy, right? I met Hans at a dinner party and we jammed! It was a bizarre jam, actually. He was playing "La vie en Rose" on piano,
my friend was singing, Stewart Copeland from "The Police"
was playing bongos, And sure enough, Hans trusted me to work
with him on Sherlock Holmes, and that was the beginning
of our collaboration together. Guthrie Govan. I saw him on Youtube. if Richard and Nick are the beginning
of my musical life, in a way, I wanted to have somebody I had
never worked with before. So I phoned him up and I made him
the leap to the future. A lot of the pieces had no guitars
on the scores. But Guthrie found a way
to put some magic into it. - Yeah great!
- But I can't do both, because they happen at the same time... Let's give that one to Frank! It was really more like exploring, we knew what the orchestra would do,
we know what they do, I wanted to see what room I could leave
for Richard or for Yolanda... Sherlock has never been performed
with slap bass! But it's it sort of works! I just thought what am I gonna do in Man
of Steel? Or in Dark Knight? Because at the beginning Hans said to me:
"Play what you like." "Just use all the rehearsal time to
listen, to look." "And whatever you feel like playing,
do it, It'll be fine!" It just gives an extra dimension which
i think is exciting for the audience, and certainly exciting for us
to play with! Let's have a break! All of the musicians
that you see on stage, or all the core band, are people that Hans actually has
real relationships with. This on-stage band is not just
randomly hired professionals, that came out to play music
that they don't care about, and Hans has been very loyal to his family
and we all love him, and love his music and I think it's
gonna show on the concert. It's like a big extended family
with people I haven't known that long, Aleskey and Ann Marie... And I haven't seen them around very much
but when you do see them, it's like "Oh how are you?" So it is like a big family.
And it's great working with people at their best level. They are all really good, they make you realize that you
gonna have to raise your game a bit, there's some really good people,
and they're all watching you! Not that I would not give it all, but it is everybody's vibe,
who's pushing each other. It's like he picked a national football team.
He's got all his best players. And that was great, because we didn't have
that much time to prepare for this. He's obviously very happy
he's got everyone he wanted. It's a great band, really great. My function on this project
is to provide the material the musicians are going to
be playing from, in coordination with the copying team
and orchestrator team out in Los Angeles. Bruce Fowler and his team in Los Angeles, who've done all the orchestrations for Hans
for many many years, they did all the charts,
so we have orchestral parts, we also have band parts. We decide what we're gonna play
and work that way. Once we've got the basic structure
and the rhythm, then it's time to put
the orchestra on, This sort of project is definitely
work-in-progress, because it's a very creative project
and things are changing every minute. So I get requests to add
certain passages to other parts, and just mix and match it a little bit
to make it how they want it, and then I reprint it
and take it down for them to incorporate into the
performance. and I'm playing exactly the same lines
on that score that I played 20 years ago. And Hans keeps looking around saying: "That sounds exactly like it did
20 years ago." Hans called me, he was in L.A.
I was in London, "can you get on a plane,
can you come over," Actually I didn't know about Lion King, He said:
"I got this new movie, it's a Disney animation." I said "First, I can't make it over there". "The best thing is... you send me the music,
the recordings," This was the days before being able
to e-mail large files, So I did all the recording in my studio in
London, and sent them tapes over to L.A. So we never actually saw
each other during that project. It was an interesting time,
nobody at Disney really knew whether it was going to be
a success or not. "We're really worried.
We can't afford a third trumpet." It seems to have done quite well
for everybody! Czar, She's extraordinary! Her voice
is just mind-blowing. I just knew her as a composer,
somebody who worked with Hans. And other people as well, it's just
so nice to be on stage with them for once. And the other musicians are just brilliant! Of course I do have a wonderful, special
connection with Ann Marie. and I think we do have a really good
chemistry on stage. It's amazing to me that a lot of
people think that film scores are something that are written once and aren't
presentable as a live concert. But actually, this is an entirely new
platform for Hans' music, where it can really stand alone. And it's been amazing to see the
parts come to life with a live band. choir and drumline are also revealed
at the performance. There's a lot of music to choose from. They'd spend a long time deciding which
pieces they wanted to use, But that's really Hans in the end of the day. But there were a lot of friends
and colleagues giving their opinion. And Gladiator, they just had
the love theme, but someone who wanted to make it different said:
"You gotta have some the battle!" Hans said "We tried it but it's never worked!" It was a big bone of contention
getting this one together. Czar and I did a version
which nobody liked, Andrew was beating up on me,
because there was one tune I wanted to leave out, and going: "they played it
on ice hockey game!" So we took pieces,
put it all together, so we have a much more rounded,
complete ark of the story for Gladiator. Some of the medleys
have been put together, there are movies, rather than
just having a 2 or 3-minute piece, we've made some longer selections, which have two or three different movies
in the same piece of music, joined together. Which makes it interesting as well. Let's have a listen from the beginning.
That's probably the best thing. Somebody's head exploded
halfway through... Sorry! That hammond made me feel so heavenly
I lost the chords... Some of these pieces are 20minutes I think
Batman is 20minutes long... I think it's probably...
I don't know I haven't timed it. It must be 15minutes or something... It's quite a lot! More than I
thought it would take me to remember. The thing I love about this concert is... the body of work over 30 years, from
Driving Miss Daisy to... I guess the latest one out
is Spider-Man. There's a huge variety,
and different moods, but always good tunes, great ideas,
each one unique and individual. But they work really well together
as a concert as well. Right now all I know, is these pieces of music. Because I'm just
trying to memorize them, trying to be in this moment. I don't have any other pieces
of music in my head! when I was preparing for this project, I
was going back to old files, looking... I'm playing a lot of textures
and soundscapes, the things that I created
for the various movies, and flying them live in different places
and so forth. 2004! Ten years old... Wow! That's a long long time. It's my first time in public
with an accordion! and I've managed to get a parrot
to sit on the side of it, it's been a lot of fun actually! It works well in Pirates, and I also play it
in Sherlock and Madagascar. And then, put it down
for the rest of the show. It's really good! Oh God... Frank Ricotti on marimbas,
and Gary Kettel on timpani, And if you look at the history of their
film work, if you look at the history
of the work they did, it's absolutely amazing! One of my greatest games of recording
in London is always, because they've played on everything and
they've done everything you know, it's usually, I'm going "well if you were
to hit the timps with brushes on the side like this..." And they go "I don't know Hans
if it'll sound good." And then I'm happy! I'm trying to keep
the excitement going. That was really a bad idea
me doing this. When we were listening through
the stuff in Los Angeles, we started playing True Romance,
and I suddenly remembered Tony Scott coming in the room, so is looking down, listening, there's some emotion attached,
but mostly, it's just... working out what we're going to do, and getting everything to sound
as good as it can be. It's key that this concert is visually
interesting. You may have the best drummer,
or bass player or guitarist, but they'll sit there with the same instrument
in their hands all night... My job is to pick up a different
instrument every two minutes, "Oh what is that?
What's he playing now?" "Wow, what's that sound?" "Oh it's coming from him!" I'm a bit of a joker in the pack. I'm always coming up with surprises. A bit like a magic show I had
to prepare everything I was doing. The other member in the band really is
Marc Brickman, our lighting designer. I've known Marc for many many
years. He's always been the... great visionary lighting designer
for Pink Floyd. I said to him I don't want to
tell you what to do. You just go and jam on this music. He took the whole building down today,
the power in the all building... Which is very normal
with Marc. Things will either explode or whatever
and you just have to be prepared for this. Harvey said to me: "You
better be prepared to tell the audience..." "what would be up on there
because we might not have power." But, you know, it's Marc! It works as a concert without
showing one frame a picture. being shown, that makes it
quite extraordinary. I don't often listen to soundtracks
without the film, and I really do prefer to listen to music
within the film, where it was intended to be. But to hear it in a concert
environment like this, and it's been really well crafted, it was
really well thought about, the segue ways to one into the other,
and the medleys, I think people are going to appreciate
the effort that has been going into it. at least one person who's the mad man.
And that's just my role! I like that role! Because it just fits me!
No, I... I love to have fun on stage,
I don't make fun of music, I make fun with music,
with the help of music, and those little props, or
maybe a mask here or there, it may give a little smile to
the audience as well. Because some of that music is
very heavy, very intense, it may just need a little...
it's like having a desert, and adding a little bit
of red pepper... People always mistake the idea that a
composer is a performer, I am NOT a performer. You know,
I get stage fright, that's why I haven't done
many shows, but that's Ann Marie and
Aleksey Igudesman, Ann Marie in her sweet little way going: "You know Hans, I think it would be
really fun if..." And I'm going "NO!" Of course I end up
playing the banjo! Because it's like modern music,
but it's almost like a rock concert as well. You got such elements as percussion and
all Hans' stuff in there, but also it's such a great production
from the lights, and just got seventy people on stage,
it's a big spectacle, and all great music!
He's such a master at what he does, I always learn something from the process
of working with him, it doesn't matter which project it is, I have three rules from
conducting orchestra or writing music, you gotta do great work,
we gotta make magic, but we will also gotta have fun! then we can discuss if we're going to
do something else. There are some people
you know for so long, it's just like there's been no separation! Hans is one of these guys,
who really values people, who he has known a long time, we really understand each other well and
we go back a very long way. And I don't think anything will ever
get in the way of that. We're not rivals in any way, we don't interfere, we complement,
all the activities we do musically, Just, I'm in Europe, he's in the States... I'm so happy that I was one of the first people
he put on the list. Well, I hear they're playing
the first song now... I'd better go, otherwise I'll be in trouble.
Cheers guys! Somebody said to me recently, I feel the nerves,
trust me! You're not recording this, are you?
You're not! He is recording! I'm not in charge of that one! It's alright. I don't mind. It’s okay I’ll burn their whole
fucking house down ! I think they're trying up
the subwoofers. Absolutely! Let us do it. German version.
Tristan and I. "TRRistan".
It's "Deshe BasaRRA". - Mr Harvey that's really ridiculous!
- They asked me to do it! Okay! The subwoofers are definitely working.
I could feel them.
Hanz Zimmer is no doubt one of the greats of our time.
He ruins just about every movie I've seen him score (10 min into Bladerunner 2049 I thought oh no.., pulled out my phone, looked it up and damn). It is obvious that he pays little attention to what is happening on the screen, resulting in a disjointed viewing experience. Plus all of scores are very derivative of his previous scores.
There is little chord structure, and the music seems very one dimensional sounding like he has pressed all the keys on the organ at once.
Unsurprisingly I found out that he does not have the ability to write actual music but just humms what he wants to people that can (not sure if that is mentioned in the documentary).
And please don't assume that I am not a fan of minimalist music because one of my favourite soundtracks is the soundtrack to Koyyanisqatsi by Philip Glass.
EDIT - just did a bit of googling and will paste this from a quora reply:
Like most Film Composers, he doesn’t do most of the composing. He writes a few ideas and then hires a bunch of “orchestrators”, “copyists”, and “arrangers” etc. to actually write the music. This scam has been going on for decades (the only major Film composer to actually write all the music was John Williams.)