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Hans Zimmer ~ Hollywood's new voice? ~ German born Hans Zimmer is a pioneer in the use of digital synthesizers, advanced computer technology, electronic keyboards and their successful integration with the traditional orchestra in music for film and television.
It
was shortly after this that Hans met and began working with the film
composer Stanley Myers. Realizing
the importance of incorporating the two musical forms, electronic and
classical, they set up "Lillie Yard Studio" in London with the
very latest state of the art musical technology. Zimmer
continued to work out of "Lille Yard Studio" as his partnership
with Myers strengthened. They
worked very successfully on Jerzy Skolimovshi's "Moonlighting",
"Success Is The Best Revenge" and "The Lightship";
Nicholas Roeg's "Insignificance" and "The
Castaway". They then
went on the compose the music for the box office hit "My Beautiful
Launderette" (Best Picture Evening Standard Awards). In
1986 he worked solo on Working Title's "Vardo" and he then went
on to work with Ryuichi Sakamoto, and David Byrne, to produce the
soundtrack for the award winning epic "The Last Emperor".
This was followed by another teaming with Stanley Myers for the
score of "Nature and the Beast". He
then wrote scores for Philip Saville's "Wonderland", and
"Paperhouse" for director Bernard Rose at Working Title.
Then for Vestron he composed the music for the Faye Dunaway, Klaus
Maria Brandauer feature "Burning Secret". In
1988 he was asked to compose the music for a small budget, ground breaking
film about South Africa, "A World Apart".
Based on a true story, this film was not just a coming of age of
the voice of the struggle, but a turning point in Hans's career.
As a result he was asked to write the Oscar nominated score for the
box office smash "Rain Man". Through
1989 Hans scored Ridley Scott's "Black Rain" and then his third
Oscar contender, "Driving Miss Daisy". He followed this with the
score for the Universal release "Bird on a Wire", Paramount's
race car drama "Days of Thunder" starring Tom Cruise, Fox's
thriller "Pacific Heights", allowing Hans to work with Oscar
winning director John Schlesinger. In
1991 Hans completed the scores for Peter Weir's "Green Card"
(Golden Globe Best Comedy), Ridley Scott's "Thelma &
Louise", Ron Howards fireman epic, "Backdraft", Richard
Donner's film "Radio Flyer", and Franc Roddman's mountaineering
thriller, "K2". 1992
began with Hans working on his second south African film, "The Power
of One" for director John Avildsen.
The epic scope of this movie allowed Hans a unique opportunity to
write both songs and music with a South African lyricist to create
haunting tribal anthems to support the historic struggle of the film. Hans
then went to work with Penny Marshall on "A League of Their Own"
about the first all woman baseball league, starring, Geena Davis, Tom
Hanks and Madonna.. Hans finished up 1992 working with Barry Levinson on
"Toys" starring Robin Williams.
1993
started with scoring the American version on "LA Femme Nikita"
and "Point of No Return" starring Bridget Fonda.
This was Hans's second collaboration with director John Badham.
Hans then worked with director Percy Adlon of his film
"Younger and Younger", reteamed with executive producer Penny
Marshall for "Calendar Girl" and also with Tony Scott, who
directed "Days of Thunder" for the Quentin Tarentino story of
"True Romance". Hans' score for the Disney surprise hit "Cool Runnings"
did
blistering business at both the box office and in the charts. Hans
scored the criticaly acclaimed "I'll Do Anything" written
and directed by James L. Brooks, starring Nick Nolte,
and then the original score to Bille Augusts' " House of The Spirits".
1996
started out with the score for another drama movie - “The Whole Wide
World”, followed by the very popular action movie “The Rock”,
directed by Michael Bay and starring Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage. This
score was cocomposed with Media Ventures associates Nick Glennie-Smith and
Harry Gregson-Williams. Hans
provided the theme for the TV-series “High Incident”, before moving on
to another action project - “Broken Arrow”. This film was directed by
former chinese/Hong Kong, now Hollywood-based star director John Woo and
starred John Travolta and Christian Slater. The
Muppets received a Hans Zimmer score for their newest feature film “Muppet
Treasure Island” that same year, followed by the propulsive, psycho fan
movie “The Fan” starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes. 1996
concluded with “The Preacher’s Wife”, another one of those
tear-jerking comedies starring, among others, Whitney Houston (that’s
right - there was no score album for this one!!) In
1997, Hans teamed up with Bille August again to compose the music for his
newest film “Smilla’s Sense of Snow”, starring Julia Ormond and
Gabriel Byrne. The score, however, was mainly composed by Harry
Gregson-Williams, Zimmer serving as cocomposer only. Soon
after, Zimmer signed a contract with the then newly established multimedia
company DreamWorks founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and
David Geffen, and provided the score for their first feature release that
year - “The Peacemaker” - directed
by Spielberg protegé Mimi Leder, and starring George Clooney and Nicole
Kidman. 1997
ended with a bang, Zimmer being nominated for an Oscar for his romantic
music to “As Good As It Gets”, the very popular and awardwinning
comedy starring Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt and Greg Kinnear. He lost to
Anne Dudley’s “The Full Monty”, though... 1998 wasn’t all that a prolific year for Hans Zimmer, much due, I guess, to his position as chairman for the music department Media Ventures (with names such as Harry Gregson-Williams, Nick Glennie-Smith, Trevor Rabin, John Powell, Gavin Greenaway, Jeff Rona and John van Tongeren under his tutelage) . However,
we did see/hear ONE excellent performance that year, around
Christmas,
when the DreamWorks-animated bible epic “The Prince of Egypt”
premiered to great box office and critical success. Hans wrote the score,
while Stephen Schwartz of Disney and Alan Menken-fame wrote the lyrics.
The score was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to the very popular
“Shakespeare in Love” by Stephen Warbeck. 1999
started out with Terence Malick’s highly anticipated comeback: the
quasi-philosophical World War II-epic “The Thin Red Line”. This film
received Hans Zimmer’s most restrained and subdued score to date, and
was also nominated for an Oscar (it lost to Nicola Piovani’s “Life
is Beautiful”). The
awardwinning Dreamworks Holocaust documentary “The Last Days” directed
by Istvan Szabo followed next with astonishingly lyrical Zimmer
music. As a contrast to this, Zimmer also cowrote the score to
action flick "Chill Factor" with Media Ventures associate John
Powell. DreamWorks’ computer-animated feature “The Road to El Dorado”, scored by Hans, with songs by Elton John (remember LION KING, anyone?) was a moderate success in early 2000. During the feverish summer months, Ridley Scott’s epic “Gladiator”, the costly costume grandeur from the Roman Empire, premiered to mixed reviews. Zimmer wrote the score with renowned artist Lisa Gerrard, coupling his usual electronic/symphonic blend with eerie eastern vocals. Similarly, Zimmer teamed up with John Woo again, for his sequel to Brian de Palma’s box office success “Mission: Impossible” from 1995. Zimmer departed completely from Danny Elfman’s mesmerizing score for the first film (as did the film itself), and provided a rocky "tough guy" score with flamboyant spanish guitars incorporated - plus a modern techno take on Lalo Schifrin’s indelible theme. In
early 2001, Zimmer landed the project of Ridley Scott's sequel to the very
succesful and chilling thriller from 1991 "Silence of the Lambs"
called "Hannibal", Anthony Hopkins reprising his role as the
icecold psychotic Hannibal Lecter. Later that year, released as the most expensive film of all time, Michael Bay's war epic "Pearl Harbor" received a melodious, yet somber score by Zimmer. The film itself received mostly bad reviews.
...TO BE CONTINUED.... For more Zimmer info (that is actually up-to-date), go to the composer link section!
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