Revered film composer Hans Zummer faces his fears and brings his movie scores to Australia

REVERED film composer Hans Zimmer’s music has moved many millions of people; now this composer is about to face his fears in Australia.

WHEN it comes to discussing revered film composer Hans Zimmer’s career, prolific is an understatement.

He’s worked on more than 100 films, and his groaning trophy cabinet includes four Grammy’s, multiple Brit Awards, two Golden Globes and, yes, an Academy Award.

From The Lion King, to The Dark Knight trilogy and Gladiator to The Pirates Of the Caribbean — it’s a fair assumption that just about every Australian household has had a film experience soundtracked by the 59-year-old German composer.

But there’s one thing Zimmer could not do until now — and that is muster the courage to bring the music that has soundtracked more than 30 years of cinema to the live stage.

It was another music great who helped Zimmer overcome his stage fright — the versatile songwriter and guitarist for The Smiths, Johnny Marr, with whom he collaborated on The Amazing Spider-Man 2 soundtrack.

“He told me you can’t hide behind the curtain forever, you need to look your audience in the eye,” he says.

“I didn’t go on stage for 40 years because I quit when I was in a band in England because I hated the stage fright and everything about it.

“Johnny Marr and Pharrell Williams were always on my case saying ‘you don’t want to do this in a wheelchair ... you’ve got to stop hiding behind your fear and letting it govern your life’.”

Highly acclaimed film composer Hans Zimmer is bring his repertoire of compositions to the stage. Picture: John Shearer

Hans Zimmer: Revealed arrives in Australia next month, a two-part concert that features original scores performed live and re-imagined versions featuring special guests from the rock and pop world.

“You’re going to see a deer in front of the headlights and I’m going to try and play some music — luckily I’m surrounded by people who know what they’re doing and we make a lot of noise,” he laughs.

The affable Zimmer is an absolute delight to have a discussion with regarding film and music,

particularly his process of creating.

“The more movies I do the more I realise that it is an impossible task,” he explains.

“The blank page seems to turn blanker and you wrestle with every note ... nothing seems to come easier.

“It gets worse and harder but I wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

“My job isn’t to write what they do elegantly with words and pictures up on the screen, my job is to write some sort of subtext. So Pirates (Of the Caribbean) is all about rock and roll and Hell’s Angels — so a bit more of that comes in. Gladiator was all about (Australian musician) Lisa Gerrard (who featured in the score) — there needed to be the spirit of a woman in it — so I’m letting you in on the secret a little bit.”

Hans Zimmer is facing his fears of performing live and will be touring Australia next month.

Zimmer has regularly teamed with the brilliant, yet notoriously secretive, director Christopher Nolan, including on of his finest scores, for the 2014 sci-fi hit Interstellar.

“Honestly Interstellar is so personal,” Zimmer explains of working with Nolan.

“The whole process on that started in typical Chris (Nolan) fashion. He said ‘look I’m not going to tell you what the movie is about but if I were to write a page of something and you gave me one day — would you interpret what I had written on that page into music?’

“Sure enough I get this page which is beautifully typed and written — not from a computer — it is a carbon copy and the only one in the world. I’m actually never going to tell you what was on that piece of paper but it was a fable about a father and his son and the son is really into science. He knows my son is really into science. So I wrote a piece of music about what it feels like to be a father to this child.

“I phoned Chris and he came around and I played him this really fragile, intimate, personal piece and said ‘well what do you think?’. He said ‘well I had better make the movie now’ — and he started talking about space and the vastness of time and how he and Kip Thorne were struggling with black holes. I asked him where this fragile piece of music would fit into this epic tale of space — and he said ‘I know where the heart of the film is now’.

That is the essence of what Zimmer will bring to the stage for his tour. With no visuals and no actors, the compositions are recognised only from the performance.

“Absolutely,” he says.

“Like The Lion King — everybody knows that voice at the beginning of the movie but they don’t know the guy who sings it and to actually put him there in front of the audience — that’s not an actor or a pretender — that’s the real thing. It just adds a level of adrenaline and excitement that these are the people who played on those scores — and they are really good and they know how to perform. It really is special.”

Pharrell Williams and Zimmer collaborated on the soundtrack for film The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Picture: Casey Curry

Of all his films, one immediately springs to mind as the most difficult. Then others begin to surface as having their own unique challenges.

“Thin Red Line was nearly impossible,” he says of Terrence Malick’s ponderous 1998 war epic.

“It was really hard but they all are because you’re trying to fill a blank page but it was the one I learnt the most from.

“Interstellar wasn’t easy. It was really ambitious and fortunately with Chris (Nolan) if I have an outlandish idea he doesn’t tell me to calm down, he lets me try them out. With Interstellar — the whole idea of the church organ seemed like a great idea — then you suddenly go ‘where can you still find a great organ that isn’t in a church surrounded by traffic noise?’

“They’re all great ideas until the practicalities come into it. Like The Dark Knight Rises I said to Chris ‘we should have a chant with 100,000 people doing it’ — well that’s a great idea but where do you find 100,000 people when you are trying to work in secret.”

Having just wrapped on Boss Baby and finishing up Nolan’s upcoming war film Dunkirk — you could not pick two polar opposite films.

So how does one go from an animated children’s film to a war epic seamlessly?

“Well that’s why I do it,” he laughs.

“The great thing about animation is you can go truly and totally inappropriately mad.”

And Dunkirk?

“That’s the great thing about working with Chris — we don’t tell anybody anything. We’re not being mean. Look at The Dark Knight — all these people were saying that Heath Ledger couldn’t be The Joker and we didn’t respond and we did not comment. Then the movie came out nobody expected it to be that sort of a Batman movie. We’re here to give people an experience and the only way for people to truly experience something is to discover it themselves.”

For the first Hans Zimmer is bringing his movie compositions to life on stage. Picture: Ed Robinson / OneRedEye

Hans Zimmer Revealed, May 2, Quodos Bank Arena (Sydney); May 4, Rod Laver Arena (Melbourne); May 6, Brisbane Entertainment Centre; May 8, Perth Arena

Originally published as Revered film composer Hans Zummer faces his fears and brings his movie scores to Australia