I can't believe I actually saw Hans Live!

As a graduate of music composition, Hans was always a big name in my list of icons and influences. Just look at his portfolio of movie music:

• Batman
• Spiderman
• Superman
• Interstellar
• The Lion King
• James Bond
• Inception
• Bladerunner
• Dune
• Gladiator
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Mission Impossible
• Top Gun

The list goes on. Basically a majority of huge blockbusters are defined by the music of Hans Zimmer.

And then he starts touring the world? No way would I ever get an opportunity to see such a big name in concert!

Even to this day, I find myself watching the occasional interviews and sit downs when, say, Dune comes out, or he has an in-depth talk with somebody like Rick Beato, or collaborates with Jacob Collier.

And then my dear wife shows me that he is in fact coming to Shanghai in like 2 weeks, and there are still a handful of tickets left!

Given it was a once in a lifetime opportunity, we went for the big boy tickets and paid about $250 per seat. I mean, there are posh meals you can spend way more on that, and I'd much rather have a lifetime memorable experience for that price.

The Experience

The concert was barely a ten minute drive from our home so we left like 20 minutes before the concert started and still found ourselves waiting 15 minutes. You do the maths. Either way it was mighty convenient.

Unfortunately, like every single concert and even in China, the stadium or concert hall was a poor choice and badly designed for such things. I don't know what it is, but for all its incredible feats of manpower, building cities of skyscrapers practically overnight, China just seems truly incapable of designing a decent concert hall. In all our years, there has never been one to impress. Today was no difference.

I think it was a tennis court stadium they put out a few Ikea chairs on the ground floor so everybody tall in front of us was a blockage of view. Thankfully I was tall but there was another tall old man in front of me.

Also, my back still hurts now, the day after, because I was on an uncomfortable chair for 3 hours and I was kind of slouching in consideration of the people behind me (the curse of being a considerate tall person).

Shoddy set up aside, the actual performance went off without a hitch and my god it was great!

The Band

Starting off with Dune, the whole concert was an emotional journey and I must admit I got teary eyed a couple of times, notably during Lion King and Gladiator.

But the visuals were pretty stunning too. That's not to say there was some amazing pyrotechnics or anything, but the Hans Zimmer Band was just incredible. Gracious and beautiful female musicians from the badass Cellist and the double drummers and timpanist, to the world renowned Lisa Gerrard (singer from Gladiator), The crazy powerful Dune voice from Loire Cotler, and even the daughter of the Lion King's movie theme singer, Lebohang Morake (The naaaaaa singwenyaaaa da da deee chee wa wa bit is probably the most recogniseable). She wasn't even born when that music was made.

It's a testament to how gracious and wholesome Hans Zimmer is, that these people from as far back as 48 years are still touring with him today. It's quite stunning.

Perhaps my favourite character on stage who I've seen in interviews before is the eclectic flautist Pedro Eustache who brought half the entire energy to the concert. He carries with him flutes that are anywhere between 3,000 years old and 'something we built from Home Depot's PVC piping'.

Although Hans Zimmer himself is perhaps famously awkward and clumsy in his own way, something expressed in every interview I've ever seen and exacerbated live on stage, the band seem to gel together really well.

The Music

I first want to describe an experience which was probably the one craziest moment. You won't be able to understand because you weren't there, and I doubt any of you have 'heard' anything like it. I put heard in quotes because... I'm not entirely sure I even heard it myself! It was a feeling. A terrifying, literal gut wrenching feeling.

In a moment in one of the Dune tracks, it reached a climax where all the lights went out, and suddenly, I thought something horrific was happening.

Terrorists? Can't be, this is China!
Is this what an earthquake sounds like?
There's no volcanoes nearby are there??

My mind wasn't even joking to itself with these things. I was desperately rationalising, flipping through every possibility that could be causing this. My eyes were darting around looking for clues and I saw the bassist waving his hands around, while at the same time, something dropped from above the stage

Is he waving to stop the music?? Disaster!
What dropped, is the stadium crumbling, shoddy construction unable to handle the vibrations? Argh!

after 30 seconds of that I finally learnt it was somehow part of the music and everything was cool.

I checked my ears to see if they were bleeding (Again I'm not exaggerating, I thought I could feel liquid oozing out) and shook myself back to sanity.

Hans, after the fact, said 'we Germans like our bass'

It turns out they just used every single bass capability they apparently had - which included three bassists - and just went deep. I'm serious, this sound was insane. I'm a professional musician, i've been to loads of concerts, 5-day festivals, you name it. I've listened in the best headphones and heard the best studio speakers. I had never heard/felt anything like this in my life. It was as terrifying as it was cool.

Anyway, other than that, the rest of the music was just cool, Excellent solo performances, beautiful vocals, percussion from all over the world, and everything fit together smoothly, quoting each other here and there (Pirates of the Caribbean quoted inside a Gladiator moment, for example).

One thing that was perhaps a bit too much was Hans' constant admiration of his team. Between every track he would talk, which is fine, but like, for a while. This is this wonderful, beautiful, talented person, and this one is this one, and we did this and that'.

I can't imagine how sick of it everybody is by this point in the tour lol.

But my main annoyance was not from Hans and his crew at all.

The frickin' Audience

Now, even if I'm a multi-millionaire, if I'm going to get front row, or almost front row seats to anything, the chances of me being anything but very enthusiastic about the thing I'm seeing is slim to none.

And yet, there were kids on our row. One was fast asleep by the first quarter, and the other two just messing about with each other half the time.

On the other side, the guy next to my wife was on his phone, goose-necked down to the floor for about 80% of the show.

In front of us, no less than 5 people were filming pretty much the entire show.

Hans even had to stop for a moment and interrupt the flow while the guards dealt with somebody on the other side, with Hans then talking about how concerts used to be cool before phones, and hoping nobody else was abusing things like that.

Now, obviously, as you can see, I took some photos myself. But you know what I did? I turned the brightness right down, I held the phone right up to my chest as low as possible, and I took some quick photos before putting it down again for memory's sake. 99% of the time I was sitting on my phone.

The lesson learned here is, you either get front row seats, or you take the hit and get something cheaper so you get to be on a raised platform. Phones have distinctly ripped out value from the not-quite-front seats.

So yeah suffice to say my brain was battling my constant annoyances with the sheer joy of seeing Hans live, and I like him a little bit more now that he called out the phone abuser.

The wife and I are definitely going to start rewatching some Zimmer movies. Starting with all 5 pirates of the Caribbean because I only ever saw the first one, and I assume the rest are garbage, but still.

Last Thought

I must admit, my level of joy noticeably increased when I saw my wife next to me shaking her head in awe or any other expression of interest in the show. This is because for my whole life I'm surrounded by well, normal people, who simply don't get music, and certainly don't pay any attention to it when watching a movie, despite how much it makes the movie work. Several time's I've asked 'how'd you like the music' or 'the music was great' only to get replies like 'what music?'. Infuriating!

So now my wife has been more directly pushed into my world more consciously, it's a sparkly feeling, for sure. Thanks, Hans!