The Santa Barbara Bowl is no stranger to orchestral performances, but it may never have welcomed a show quite like Hans Zimmer’s upcoming live performance. One of Hollywood’s most-loved film composers, Zimmer is on a world tour, bringing some of his best-known celluloid compositions live to Santa Barbara on August 13.
Zimmer, who has scored more than 150 films, first gained fame when he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on 1989’s Rain Man. Since then, the German-born musician/conductor has been responsible for the musical accompaniment to some of the best-known films of the past several decades, including The Lion King (for which he won an Oscar), Gladiator, The Dark Knight, and Interstellar.
When asked during a recent phone interview with the Santa Barbara Independent what the tour means to him, Zimmer replied, “[Friends] say it’s a chance for me to stop hiding behind the screen.” Playing live also affords him the opportunity to tweak bits of the recorded music that he was obligated to leave in when a film was finished. “The great difference between doing a movie score and what I’m doing now is you finish [the piece], the movie comes out, [and] that’s it,” he said. “You can’t ever go and change it. They tear it out of my hands and put it in the movie and I can’t go and improve it. [But now] every night I keep writing new counter lines, you know, I keep playing around with the thing.”