I was very fortunate to attend the Hans Zimmer Concert last night when the film composer and his band of musicians and performances landed in London.
The 3 hour concert was a spectacular event (and very loud!) with Zimmer himself performing on Keyboards, Piano and various guitars as well as performing on the kettle drums in one piece. As expected with Zimmer the stage was not laid out in normal orchestral form and there was no conductor - HZ himself brought people in, raised the tempo and closed down the cues. The "orchestra" was set out very unconventionally with Keyboards, solo violin and double bass as well as Richard Harvey on pan pipes and various other instruments at the very front.
A massive percussion section including one awesome drummer (who contributed to Man Of Steel), a timpanist and various other anvils, drums and things that go bang (including glockenspiel). A group of about 15/20 musicians made up the strings, trombone and trumpets towards the rear with the excellent Crouch End Festival Chorus at the back of the stage.
A fantastic line up of music included:
Driving Miss Daisy/Sherlock/Magagascar - HZ on piano and a stunning opening to the evening! Crimson Tide - the opening to the film and main theme with full chorus Angels and Demons - huge with a mad drum section in the middle Gladiator - spine tingling solo voice, choir and blistering brass and percussion The Da Vinci Code - the finale cue with superb solo violin backed by the slowly building sound of the band The Lion King - Lebo M opened this stunning cue and Zimmer dedicated it to his daughter (who was sitting 3 seats away from me!) Pirates of the Caribbean - a fantastic finale to act one with a gorgeous version of the love theme and also a nice surprise with my personal favourite Pirates cue - Up Is Down, with the main them giving a rousing ending! True Romance - a virtuoso performance on glockenspiel and percussion opened the second half. Rain Main and Green Card with HZ on Piano was just stunning! Man of Steel with plenty of guitars (including Johnny Marr) and percussion backed with Brass was excellent and this segued into...... Thin Red Line - which was just epic!
A surprise of the evening was Pharrell Williams appearing on stage with a great version of Happy (accompanied by HZ on guitar and the whole orchestra). He then performed a very long and noisy version of....
Spiderman - the Electro Suite - too much for me and disappointingly did not include his Spidey Theme. The Dark Knight ended the official programme with a very loud long cue featuring the Jokers music and the main theme. Very very noisy which could have been edited down by a few minutes.
Zimmer then explained the piece Aurora and dedicated it to the people who lost their lives in that tradegy.
The encore was music from Inception which was just mind blowing!
Zimmer was very funny, witty and never took himself too seriously. The musicians were energetic and passionate and really showed they were thoroughly enjoying the whole occasion.
My first every rock n roll film music concert! Highly recommended with the exception of the two long superhero cues (Spidey and Batman) which could have focused more on the thematic material (but Zimmer does seem to prefer the villains!).
My admiration for his scores has grown over the years and this concert has moved him up even further - this guy demonstrated his talents, energy and reason why he is loved by Hollywood!
I second everything Brendon summarised above. I was very, very impressed by the concert, and it was clearly very well rehearsed.
Some highlights: The gradual reveal of the ensemble during the opening Driving Miss Daisy was fantastic. The rousing performance of the Man of Steel music (the trailer piece, of course. Lebo M's appearance on stage, with a CD-perfect rendition of the famous opening chant. The Inception encore, part of which you can see here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jBbFay_23U The music, emotion and stage lighting during 'Journey to the Line' was the best part of the evening for me. Absolutely stunning, even if they had to leave out the beautiful music at the end of the track, presumably for time reasons.
Some negative bits: Amazing Spider-man 2 - they had to do Electro of course since Pharrell showed up, but it's not exactly a track that lends itself to a concert hall performance. Very noisy and confused overall, and not on par with the recorded version. I was hoping for a bit of the Spiderman theme but it was nowhere to be heard. Dark Knight - the beautiful music from the end of TDK was sacrificed in favour of Aurora, and the whole opening Bank Robbery sequence was played without a satisfying payoff of the Joker theme. No 'Dog Chasing Cars' either, and a slightly messy suite overall.
Soooo upset I didn't get to go!! It looked like a fantastic line-up of some of Zimmer's best music, and my fingers are crossed that he'll do another concert in the near future. I would have gone just for this:
I planned a trip to Asia for this past week and while it was nice I would have preferred to see this concert! Thin Red Line live? That would be pretty epic.
I planned a trip to Asia for this past week and while it was nice I would have preferred to see this concert! Thin Red Line live? That would be pretty epic.
My friend said they particular piece, together with the lighting effects, was his favourite part of the night. He is now hunting down the cd!
Soooo upset I didn't get to go!! It looked like a fantastic line-up of some of Zimmer's best music, and my fingers are crossed that he'll do another concert in the near future. I would have gone just for this:
Great performance! I was at the Ghent concert in 2000 and the performance of Crimson Tide that evening was somewhat disappointing, it lacked power.
