When God Parts the Clouds Hans Zimmer Will Be Composing

I said those exact words when I walked out of Interstellar.

And then last night I had the — what’s the word, privilege, honor, life-altering experience? - whatever the word is, I had that, seeing Hans Zimmer Live in Chicago.

If you’re unfamiliar, Hans Zimmer is a quaint little indie artist whose lesser known works include every film score that has defined the sound of your moviegoing experience for the last 30+ years. It’s hard not to stare in bewilderment every time someone says “who?” when I talk about him, because what do you mean who? It’s Hans Zimmer. Yknow. Hans Zimmer. He’s. He’s Hans Zimmer.

The thing - as if there’s just the one - that makes him special, is at no point in his career has he underperformed on an opportunity. When he commits to compose, he is composing not like his life depends on it, but because it does. Music is his life. Creating it is his inhalation, and sharing it is the exhale. We are the blessed ones to share that breath of musical life.

He said last night [paraphrasing as best I can]:

“I keep writing because I am always chasing that one piece that I can look at once it’s done and say, you know, that one is okay. That one turned out okay. I still haven’t found it yet. But this one came close.”

Begins Interstellar.

And if you read interviews with him, he’s been saying that for over thirty years.

Rain Man.

The Lion King.

Prince of Egypt.

Gladiator.

Pirates of the Caribbean.

Thin Red Line.

The Dark Knight.

Inception.

Blue Planet.

The man has created unparalleled masterpieces one after another after another and is still chasing the one he can say was good enough.

Or in his own words:

How many sunflower scenes did Van Gough paint before he was happy?

And his humility shines on stage.

Because the show is Hans Zimmer Live. But he does not treat himself as the star of the show. The star of the show is his band. Rather than having just the London Philharmonic Orchestra (just, he says) Zimmer has collected some of the greatest musicians and vocalists in the world and built a group that can tap into the creative lifestream he is deriving these tunes from, and push the sounds inside each instrument to the furthest reaches of their potential. And then on occasion they go on tour just to show us that yes, it’s real, it’s them, and it’s beyond anything you’ll ever experience elsewhere.

Hans Zimmer Live is an evening of not just listening to music, but being wrapped up in it. The percussion and the brass rattle the bones in your body and lift you from your seat. No standing ovation is long enough. No number of encores is enough.

Hans Zimmer and his band are — they are. Any compliment, analogy, superlative I could throw at them would bounce off their magnificence. You owe it to yourself to find out what I mean. Go watch Hans Zimmer Live in Prague. Go listen to Hans Zimmer Live 2023. Go find tickets to the closest city to you to carve out a single evening and catch a glimpse of the pure power of the performance these artists have in them to create for us to share in with them.

Because on a personal level, Hans holds the place that myself and my wife, without hesitation, have driven 12 hours each way and would do it again. He was both of our first experience of music moving us. The same moment in fact. 15 years before we would ever meet each other, as small children, we had the shared experience of hearing the swell of the score as a wounded young hero took the climactic mountain steps in the rain to rise into the position of leadership he was meant to take in the circle of life, and for reasons our young minds could not comprehend, the music alone moved us to tears. And in every score since, he has the connection to our spirits that regardless of the moment, the music, the meaning, we feel compelled to move, to weep, to feel.

My wife got through labor to the sound of Hans Zimmer because it inspired the feeling of power she needed to tap into to find the strength in herself to bring our son into the world. She has endured many hardships over the last several years empowered by having him be the score of her day.

I have never had music inspire me to create the way his has. The best writing I have ever done, the best creative flow I have ever achieved, the most in sync with the divine spark I have ever been — those rare and beautiful and perfect moments have been accompanied by the pulsing flow of the rise and fall of a composer who knows how to blend the synthesis of the electric and the handmade. He has found art in treating every instrument, whether ancient, or classic, or digital, or made of PVC pipe from Home Depot, as just that: an instrument, made by a musician, to make music.

He is one of the greatest music-makers that has ever lived. I do not say that as hyperbole. I do not say that lightly. I know the company that puts him in, and I put him there with very deep intentionality.

And I believe that if one day the trumpet were to resound, the clouds be rolled back as a scroll, and the Lord descend, the one God would choose to compose it is Hans Zimmer.