Hans Zimmer

The pianist and film composer Hans Zimmer was born on September 13, 1957, in Frankfurt / Main. He played the piano as a preschooler but was not convinced by classical music education. As a teenager, he moved to England, where he initially worked on his high school diploma while simultaneously integrating himself into the flourishing music scene. As a keyboardist, he first played with the Italian experimental pop formation "Krisna," then with the college punks "Ultravox." Around 1978, he met the then-unsuccessful producer Trevor Horn, with whom he co-founded the pop project "The Buggles." With the song "Video Killed The Radio Star," he achieved his first international hit in 1979; the accompanying video was among the pioneering works of the genre, and the album "The Plastic Age" became a bestseller. After his successful beginnings in the pop business, Zimmer began to take an interest in film music in the early eighties. He initially composed advertising and radio jingles at the "Air Edel" studio in London before film music veteran Stanley Meyers ("Deer Hunter") offered him a position as an assistant. This brought Zimmer into contact with the scene; he wrote his first complete soundtrack for Nicolas Roeg's "Eureka" in 1984, soon followed by the scores for "Separate Vacations" (1986) and "Castaway" (1987). At the same time, he worked as a producer and, in this capacity, was involved in the Oscar-winning score for "The Last Emperor" (1987). The first commission from the USA came with "Driving Miss Daisy," and in 1988, Zimmer finally achieved his breakthrough with the soundtrack for Barry Levinson's "Rain Man." From then on, Zimmer was in business. Together with Jay Rifkin, he founded the studio Media Ventures in Santa Monica, not far from the major Hollywood studios. With the ability to realize everything on-site with a team of excellent musicians, he established a reputation as a composer of action thrillers as well as serious epics. In 1989, he scored Ridley Scott's "Black Rain," a collaboration that would intensify further. 1991 saw "Thelma & Louise," 1992 "Toys," a comedy with Robin Williams, as well as various advertising melodies that, like the Marlboro Adventure Team's "Follow Your Dreams," developed a life of their own. A worldwide success was finally the music for "The Lion King" in 1994, which was awarded both an Oscar and a Golden Globe. Hans Zimmer is now one of the busiest composers in his genre. Since 1997, he has worked closely with DreamWorks film studios, founded by Steven Spielberg, composing film scores for "The Peacemaker" (1997), "The Prince Of Egypt" (1998), "Mission Impossible II" (2000), "Gladiator" (2000), "Pearl Harbor" (2001), "Black Hawk Down" (2002), "The Last Samurai," "Johnny English" (2003), "Laura's Star," "Spanglish" (2004), "Madagascar," "Over The Edge," "Batman Begins," "The Weather Man" (2005), among others. In the near future, "Mission Impossible III," "The Da Vinci Code," and "Pirates Of The Caribbean II" (2006) are also planned. Furthermore, Hans Zimmer occasionally performs live, as he did in 2000 at the Flanders Film Festival. There, he presented a cross-section of his most famous melodies on a large stage before 3500 listeners. 6/2005