When Hans Zimmer took the arena stage in Sydney, he was in dress pants, a button-up white shirt and a waistcoat; by the end of the career-spanning, three-hour blockbuster, he was in a black T-shirt.
Fresh from an appearance at Coachella, where the 59-year-old was joined onstage by Pharrell Williams, Zimmer debunked any preconceived notions about how an iconic German movie composer with more than 150 film scores under his belt should perform.
With minimal backing visuals – ones that only acted as clues for those less initiated – Zimmer and his band of 40+ players sent scenes from films like Gladiator, Interstellar, True Romance and The Da Vinci Code rushing into memory as their soundtracks unfolded layer by layer.
“If you need to give the choir a bit of a workout, that one will surely do it,” Zimmer laughed after the opener, a triple wave medley of Driving Miss Daisy, Sherlock Holmes and Madagascar.
Most of Zimmer’s touring musicians are young and at the top of their game, like Chinese cellist Tina Guo, who’s been playing since she was three. She came to work with Zimmer after he saw her perform with the Foo Fighters at the 2008 Grammys.
Incredibly, the best part of the night wasn’t his anecdotal tales of his scores’ various origins – “‘Do you want to do a movie about men in skirts?’” was his first thought after a phone call with Gladiator director Ridley Scott. It wasn’t even when Zimmer’s Gladiator co-composer Lisa Gerrard joined him onstage in a bejewelled canary yellow gown to sing the emotional phonemes only she understands – “Australia has a national treasure; this is it,” said Zimmer.
Instead, it was Zimmer’s wide-eyed expression as he watched his band with childlike glee, just like the rest of us. Zimmer is still the mighty mind behind some of the most moving scores in music history, but to a sold-out arena of dropped jaws, he was also an excited musician slinking behind pianos, guitars and a glockenspiel; all the while looking on in awe of his comrades.
Perhaps the only parallel moment was when Lebohang ‘Lebo M.’ Morake (best known for his work on The Lion King soundtrack) brought the film to life with his 23-year-old daughter Refi.
“When I first met him he was working in a car wash and he was a political refugee from South Africa,” Zimmer said of Lebo M. “He was the inspiration for all of it.”
When it was time for, as Zimmer put it, “a little superhero stuff”, things got loud enough to quake the floor beneath you. Scores like The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Man Of Steel and ‘Is She With You?’ (the Wonder Woman theme) featured epileptic lights in a string of climaxes.
Zimmer later spoke of how the death of Heath Ledger made him doubt his raw composition for The Dark Knight, and when he introduced ‘Aurora’, his dedication to the Aurora shooting victims, he said he hoped it was received as a pair of arms reaching across the Atlantic to offer a hug.
Closing with his gargantuan soundtrack for science-fiction thriller Interstellar, if Zimmer’s goal was to shake us to the core with his bracing layers of sound and fury, then victory is his.
Hans Zimmer Revealed played Qudos Bank Arena on Tuesday May 2. Photo by Ashley Mar
