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Hans Zimmer: Der Musik-Mann
LAST SAMURAI Soundtrack CD
Film music by Hans Zimmer.
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See my brief review of this CD.
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Hans Florian Zimmer is far less well-known than his familiar film music. Few moviegoers are aware that it is this German-born film-music composer who created the scores for such Hollywood hits as Driving Miss Daisy, The Lion King, Crimson Tide, The Prince of Egypt, Gladiator, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Last Samurai.
Hans Zimmer began his career as a composer working on advertising jingles in London. He is regarded as a pioneer in the use of computers and digital synthesizers to produce film music with a punch. In his rock-music-band days in the 1970s, Zimmer was involved with the hit song “Video Killed the Radio Star“ (composed by Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes) and produced an album for the music group The Buggles (“The Age of Plastic”).
A young Hans Zimmer and an early synthesizer.
Photo courtesy the Hans Zimmer Worship Page
In the 1980s, after touring in Europe with groups known as Krisma and Ultravox, Zimmer began to work on film music. One of his early successes was the score for the British box office hit My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). He also co-produced the soundtrack album for Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987). Zimmer's biggest break came when Hollywood took note of his music for a small-budget film about South Africa, A World Apart (1988). His next project was the Oscar-nominated score for the highly acclaimed Hollywood production Rain Man (1988). The following year he earned another nomination for Driving Miss Daisy (1989).
GLADIATOR - DVD
With music by Hans Zimmer.
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Since then, Zimmer has been steadily at work on musical scores for many films, among them such Hollywood successes as Thelma & Louise (1991), The Lion King (1994), Crimson Tide (1995, Grammy Award), and The Rock (1996, two themes) and The Gladiator (2000). It was Zimmer's score for The Lion King that finally won him his first Academy Award. (Other Oscars went to the film's Elton John-Tim Rice hit songs.) Zimmer's music for The Preacher's Wife (1996) won him yet another nomination, but the Oscar that year went to Rachel Portman for her Emma score.
| Hans Zimmer Highlights | |
• 1957 Hans Florian Zimmer born September 12, Frankfurt, Germany
• 19?? Marries Suzanne ????. They now have two children.
• 1979 Hit song "Video Killed the Radio Star"
• 1982 First film score: Moonlighting
• 1988 Oscar nomination for Rain Man
• 1989 Grammy nomination for Driving Miss Daisy
• 1994 Wins Oscar for Lion King score
• 1997 Oscar nomination for As Good As It Gets | |
In 1997 Zimmer was nominated for his musical contribution to As Good As It Gets (Best Music, Original Musical or Comedy Score), but the Titanic tidal wave left him empty-handed. Two more Zimmer-scored films premiered in 1998: The Thin Red Line with Sean Penn, and an animated feature by DreamWorks SKG, The Prince of Egypt, featuring the voices of half of Hollywood. For his Prince of Egypt score, Zimmer (with songwriter Stephen Schwartz) received a Golden Globe (Hollywood Foreign Press Association) nomination.
Following his work on Gladiator and Mission Impossible II, Zimmer began work on two new films scheduled for release in 2001: Ridley Scott's Hannibal and Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor. On 10 October 2000, Zimmer took time off from his film work to open the 27th Flanders International Film Festival with a live concert along with the Flemish Radio Orchestra in Ghent, Belgium.
Zimmer has been very busy of late. His recent work includes scores for Black Hawk Down (2001), Tears of the Sun (2003) and The Last Samurai (2003). His music can also be heard in Pirates of the Caribbean (2003, music producer, with music by Klaus Badelt) and Matchstick Men (2003). He branched out into another medium with the musical theme for the ABC/Touchstone television series “Threat Matrix” in 2003.
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