The Composer Hans Zimmer was born the son of the chemical entrepreneur Hans J. Zimmer and learned to play the piano as a child at his parents' home in the Villa Gans in Kronberg. He only had a piano teacher for a short time, according to his statement for 1 week. In the English boarding school Hurtwood House in Dorking, Surrey, he made Abitur and played synthesizer in groups like Krisma and Helden. However, Hans Zimmer never completed a musical education.
Hans Zimmers years in England
At the end of the 70s, Hans Zimmer was initially active as a composer for advertising music jingles and took part in the video clip of the Buggles with her hit Video killed the Radio star on the Modular-Sythesizer. Later, while composing advertising music and radio jingles, he met film music composer Stanley Myers, whose assistant he became in 1980. With the help of Stanley Myers, Hans Zimmer learned a lot about composing for an orchestra. At the end of the 80s, more precisely in 1989, he attracted attention with the film music for the film Rain Man.
Hans Zimmer - his career in Hollywood
With Ridley Scott's Black Rain and Ron Howard's Backdraft, he created a new style of setting action films to music. Zimmer decided to set it to music with a so-called "wall-to-wall score", i.e. to underlay most of the fim with music. Thus the prototype for many action film scores was born.
Jay Rifkin and Hans Zimmer founded the film music studio Media Ventures in the mid-1980s. In 2003 Hans Zimmer took over the business after a legal dispute with Jay Rifkin with his company Remote Control Productions. Remote Control is a kind of talent factory. Klaus Badelt, John Powell, Mark Mancina and others are among the most famous composers from the talent factory.
The film music composer Hans Zimmer had the idea to give some concerts after the completion of the work on the film Illuminati. At first there were only few appearances, because he accepted new commissions and had so little time for further appearances.
In 2016 Hans Zimmer was on a European tour with an orchestra of 70 musicians. Another live tour followed in 2017, stopping for the first time in the USA, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
He lives and works in LA and is one of the most influential and successful film composers in Hollywood history.
His works include among others:
Castaway - The Island
Rain Man (Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman and others)
A man like Taffin
Black Rain (Michael Douglas, Andy Garcia and others)
Days of Thunder (Tom Cruise, Robert Duval, Michael Rooker etc.)
Bird on a Wire (Mel Gibson etc.)
Backdraft (Kurt Russel, William Baldwin and others)
The Lion King
The Rock (Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery, Ed Harris and others)
Mission Impossible II (Tom Cruise, Thandie Newton, Anthony Hopkins and others)
Gladiator (Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Oliver Reed and others)
Pearl Habor (Josh Hartnett, Ben Affleck and others)
Last Samurai (Tom Cruise, Ken Watanabe and others)
Pirates of the Caribbean - series (Johnny Depp, Tom Hollander, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom and others)
The Da Vinci Code (Tom Hanks, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina and others)
The Dark Knight (Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Heath Ledger and others)
Inception (Leonardo di Caprio, Joseph Grodon Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ken Watanabe and others)
Man of Steel (Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Lawrence Fishburne and others)
And many more