Zimmer, Hans (EN)

Zimmer Hans, *12 September 1957 Frankfurt am Main, German composer and music producer. He has lived in London since he was 14. He has no formal musical education. In the late 70s and early 80s, he collaborated with the bands The Buggles, Krisma, Helden and others. He was one of the first to use synthesisers and computers during concerts. In the 80s, he was an assistant to Stanley Myers, and together, they created the Lillie Yard recording studio in London; they wrote music for several films, combining traditional and electronic instruments. Zimmer’s international career began with the film Rain Man, for which he received his first Oscar nomination. At that time, he moved to Los Angeles. In 1989, in Santa Monica (California), together with music producer Jay Rifkin, he created the Media Ventures studio complex (since 2003, Remote Control Productions), which cooperates with a large group of composers and performers of film music. In 1997, Zimmer became the head of the music department at DreamWorks SKG (DreamWorks Pictures). In 2016, he went on his first concert tour, including Gdańsk, Łódź and Kraków. He also visited Poland in later years.

In 1995, for the soundtrack to The Lion King, he received an Oscar, a Golden Globe, a Chicago Film Critics Award, two Grammy Awards, an American Music Award for Best Album of the Year, and in 2022, for the music for Dune, an Oscar, a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe. He has ten Oscar nominations to his credit (including for The Thin Red Line and Interstellar); he also received a Golden Globe for the music for Gladiator (2000), a Grammy Award for the music for Crimson Tide (1996) and – together with J.N. Howard – for The Dark Knight (2009), several Classic BRIT Awards. He was honoured with the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) Henry Mancini Award (2003), the Max Steiner Award (2018), and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2018).

Zimmer has composed soundtracks for over 150 films. He regularly collaborates with directors Ridley Scott, James L. Brooks, Gore Verbinski, Christopher Nolan, and Denis Villeneuve.

The composer often combines electronic media with traditional instruments and analogue sounds with computer-generated ones. His music is characterised by stylistic diversity, a fusion of often incompatible elements – classical, folk, popular, and rock. Zimmer draws inspiration from various sources and cultures, often from South African folklore (African drums and choirs), as in The Power of One, the anti-apartheid A World Apart, Black Hawk Down, and The Lion King, he reaches for ethnic instruments (Armenian duduk in Gladiator, Japanese instruments in The Last Samurai). In The Thin Red Line, for example, he used music from the Solomon Islands and 19^th-century American hymns (the soundtrack, devoid of typical military motifs, has a lyrical, elegiac character), in Sherlock Holmes: Romanian music in Game of Shadows.

Literature: Nolan, ed. A. Brenda-Mańkowska, P. Jaskulski, Warsaw 2017.