Hans Zimmer always keeps busy. Owner of multiple Grammy and Oscar awards for film music including for "The Lion King" and "Dune," the composer is currently on the North American leg of his world tour, while also working on new scores.
Oh and on Thursday, his 67th birthday, Zimmer announced a new European tour called "Hans Zimmer Live - The Next Level" for next year.
"I'm not going to tell you what it is," he says in an interview with dpa conducted via Zoom a few days ahead of his birthday.
One of the most popular Hollywood composers of all time, the German-American artist says his concerts scheduled for 2025 and 2026 will be "something that's going to make you happy and make you smile and you're not going to forget about."
Bringing the big screen to the big stage
Zimmer wants his new shows to be even more visually spectacular than they already are.
Never one to shy away from extravaganza, the idea is to bring the "amazing entertainment ideas" of the movie industry, in which he feels so at home, to the concert stage.
"I'm not afraid about having sets built and things like that and flying people through the air," Zimmer says.
Friends including director Denis Villeneuve have already sent him ideas, the composer says.
"The industry that builds amazing lighting rigs and amazing entertainment ideas, they're firing on all cylinders. They're inventing something every day, a new way of creating magic for an audience. So I'm taking full advantage of that."
His team took some convincing to go all-out like that, but now they are on board, Zimmer says.
"Touring is expensive, and there are always people around me, accountants and people who mind the money who go, No, you shouldn't be, Oh, we can't afford to do that."
But "when I showed them the stage design, they all went, We have to do this."
'I had terrible stage freight'
Zimmer says he never pictured himself touring the world like rockstar one day when he held his two first gigs at London's Hammersmith Apollo venue exactly 10 years ago.
"The first (concerts) were terrifying," he says.
"I was frightened and had terrible stage fright."
"I didn't want to do it in the first place," Zimmer, who was born in Frankfurt, says, but then he started to like it.
Two friends, singer Pharrell Williams and guitarist Johnny Marr, had pushed him to perform live, according to the composer.
Williams "felt very strongly that I shouldn't be hiding in a dark room, that I shouldn't hide behind a screen, that I need to look people in the eye, and I needed to go out there."
"The first tour, he came along, and he made sure that I was all right. Same with Johnny Marr."
More concerts, fewer films
Live performances have started to take up more of Zimmer's time than his composing work and sometimes. Zimmer says he can't believe he is making even more work for himself at this stage of his life.
"Hang on, I'm going to have my 67th birthday," he says with a laugh. "I shouldn't be doing this. I should be sitting in front of the television eating chocolate. But I'm excited about going out there.
"There are less movies, but there are less movies that I want to do."
Most recently, Zimmer has been working on scores for Joseph Kosinski's action flick "F1" and Steve McQueen's "Blitz."
He also loves working with directors including Ron Howard and Denis Villeneuve. The music for Villeneuve's "Dune" earned Zimmer an Oscar.
But the composer has since become less interested in Hollywood staples and turned increasingly to smaller, indpendent productions, which he says are more interesting as "they take a bigger risk."
He takes a bigger risk by going on tour, too, he says.
Bringing back the old, changing the new
Zimmer has composed scores for far more than 100 movies and he hopes to draw on this rich archive in the future. He is also looking to cover unchartered musical territory, he says.
"I probably have the best band in the world at the moment. Who are like wolves. They're hungry. They want red meat. They want a challenge."
The set list for "The Next Level" isn't final yet, but Zimmer hints it might include lesser known tracks from hits like "Black Rain," "Backdraft," "True Romance" or "Black Hawk Down."
"There's some good bits and pieces left over in the '80s and the '90s, which we never touched," he says.
At the same time, it's hard to imagine a Hans Zimmer concert without the classics from "Lion King" or "Pirates of the Caribbean." Don't worry, Zimmer says with a grin, though you might not hear the version you expect.
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