Hans Florian Zimmer (German pronunciation: [hans ˈfloːʁi̯aːn ˈtsɪmɐ]; born 12 September 1957) is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 150 films, including film scores for The Lion King, Crimson Tide, The Thin Red Line, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, The Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, 12 Years a Slave and Interstellar.

Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the United Kingdom before moving to the United States. He is the head of the film music division at DreamWorks studios and works with other composers through the company that he founded, Remote Control Productions.^[1]

Zimmer’s works are notable for integrating electronic music sounds with traditional orchestral arrangements. He has received four Grammy Awards, three Classical BRIT Awards, two Golden Globes, and an Academy Award. He was also named on the list of Top 100 Living Geniuses, published by The Daily Telegraph

Early life[edit]

Zimmer was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. As a young child, he lived in Königstein-Falkenstein, where he played the piano at home, but had piano lessons only briefly as he disliked the discipline of formal lessons.^[3] He moved to London as a teenager, where he attended Hurtwood House school.^[4] In an interview with Mashablein February 2013, he said of his parents «My mother was very musical, basically a musician, and my father was an engineer and an inventor. So, I grew up modifying the piano, shall we say, which made my mother gasp in horror, and my father would think it was fantastic when I would attach chainsaws and stuff like that to the piano because he thought it was an evolution in technology.»^[5] In an interview with the German television station ZDF in 2006, he commented: «My father died when I was just a child, and I escaped somehow into the music and music has been my best friend.»^[6] In a May 2014 interview, Zimmer said that he is Jewish, and recalled how his mother escaped to England in 1939.^[7]

Career[edit]

Zimmer began his career playing keyboards and synthesizers in the 1970s, with the band Krakatoa.^[8] He worked with The Buggles, a new wave band formed in 1977 with Trevor Horn, Geoff Downes, and Bruce Woolley. Zimmer can be seen briefly in The Buggles‘ music video for the 1979 song «Video Killed the Radio Star«.^[9] After working with The Buggles, he started to work for the Italian group Krisma, a new wave band formed in 1976 with Maurizio Arcieri and Christina Moser. He was a featured synthesist for Krisma’s third album, Cathode Mamma. He has also worked with the band Helden (with Warren Cann from Ultravox).^[10] Both Zimmer (on keyboards) and Cann (on drums), were invited to be part of the Spanish group Mecano for a live performance in Segovia (Spain) in 1984. Two songs from this concert were included in the «Mecano: En Concierto» album released in 1985 only in Spain. In 1980 Zimmer co-produced a single, «History of the World, Part 1,» with, and for, UK Punk band The Damned, which was also included on their 1980 LP release, «The Black Album,» and carried the description of his efforts as «Over-Produced by Hans Zimmer.»

While living in London, Zimmer wrote advertising jingles for Air-Edel Associates.^[10] In the 1980s, Zimmer partnered with Stanley Myers, a prolific film composer who wrote the scores for over sixty films. Zimmer and Myers co–founded the London–based Lillie Yard recording studio. Together, Myers and Zimmer worked on fusing the traditional orchestral sound with electronic instruments.^[11] Some of the films on which Zimmer and Myers worked are Moonlighting (1982), Success is the Best Revenge (1984), Insignificance (1985), and My Beautiful Launderette (1985). Zimmer’s first solo score was Terminal Exposure for director Nico Mastorakis in 1987, for which he also wrote the songs. Zimmer acted as score producer for the 1987 film The Last Emperor, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Score.^[10]

One of Zimmer’s most durable works from his time in the United Kingdom was the theme song for the television game show Going for Gold, which he composed with Sandy McClelland in 1987. In an interview with the BBC, Zimmer said: «Going For Gold was a lot of fun. It’s the sort of stuff you do when you don’t have a career yet. God, I just felt so lucky because this thing paid my rent for the longest time.»^[12]

A turning point in Zimmer’s career occurred with the 1988 film Rain Man.^[11] Hollywood director Barry Levinson was looking for someone to score Rain Man, and his wife heard the soundtrack CD of the anti-Apartheiddrama A World Apart, for which Zimmer had composed the music. Levinson was impressed by Zimmer’s work, and hired him to score Rain Man.^[13] In the score, Zimmer uses synthesizers (mostly a Fairlight CMI) mixed with steel drums. Zimmer explained that «It was a road movie, and road movies usually have jangly guitars or a bunch of strings. I kept thinking don’t be bigger than the characters. Try to keep it contained. The Raymond character doesn’t actually know where he is. The world is so different to him. He might as well be on Mars. So, why don’t we just invent our own world music for a world that doesn’t really exist?».^[14]Zimmer’s score for Rain Man was nominated for an Academy Award in 1989, and the film won four Academy Awards including Best Picture.^[15]

A year after Rain Man, Zimmer was asked to compose the score for Bruce Beresford‘s Driving Miss Daisy which, like Rain Man, won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Driving Miss Daisy’s instrumentation consisted entirely of synthesizers and samplers, played by Zimmer. According to an interview with Sound On Sound magazine in 2002, the piano sounds heard within the score come from the Roland MKS–20, a rackmount synthesizer. Zimmer joked: «It didn’t sound anything like a piano, but it behaved like a piano.»^[16]

1991’s Thelma & Louise soundtrack by Zimmer featured the trademark slide guitar performance by Pete Haycock on the «Thunderbird» theme in the film. As a teenager, Zimmer was a fan of Haycock, and their collaboration on film scores includes K2 and Drop Zone.^[17]

For the 1992 film The Power of One, Zimmer traveled to Africa in order to use African choirs and drums in the recording of the score. On the strength of this work, Walt Disney Animation Studios approached Zimmer to compose the score for the 1994 film The Lion King. This was to be his first score for an animated film. Zimmer said that he had wanted to go to South Africa to record parts of the soundtrack, but was unable to visit the country as he had a police record there «for doing ‘subversive’ movies» after his work on The Power of One. Disney studio bosses expressed fears that Zimmer would be killed if he went to South Africa, so the recording of the choirs was organized during a visit by Lebo M.^[18] Zimmer won numerous awards for his work on The Lion King, including an Academy Award for Best Original Score, a Golden Globe, and twoGrammys. In 1997, the score was adapted into a Broadway musical version which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1998.^[19][20] As of April 2012, the musical version of The Lion King is the highest grossing Broadway show of all time, having grossed $853.8 million.