REVIEW: Hans Zimmer Live Show in the Arena of Nîmes

His film music compositions to be felt with the whole body. An awesome show, a memorable night.

On 24th June 2017, in the Arena of Nîmes, a Roman amphitheatre. The theatre was filled to capacity. 08:30 pm, it began on schedule. I visited the event all the way from Kyushu, Japan. My seat was in the stage-right area, on the third level (in France, the second level). The live concert by German film music composer Hans Zimmer who has a successful career in Hollywood big movies was held in the historic city that is located in Southern France, near the Mediterranean Sea. It was a hot day.

Its sound was an exquisite harmony of the acoustic and electric instruments, and occasionally the chorus and vocalists joined/led them. Richness, thickness, edginess at the same time by not many performers and equipments—there were powerful and reliable speakers that reproduce stable and comfortable bass sounds that vibrated the audience's whole body. To feel his musical compositions with stomach was an extraordinary experience. Guitars, violins, cello, drums, percussions—the solo performances by outstanding artists were so exciting. From early works to recent, the pieces that he chose had a great variety, and the constructions and interpretations of them were very familiar to our ears but also had freshness. I loved the selections. There were plenty of my favourites. Especially I was touched by the electric guitar solo in 'Crimson Tide' and the pieces from Robert Langdon series. Hans sculptured military men's pride and extreme tensions in the deep calm sea in the 90s action thriller 'Crimson Tide', then the live-original-version electric guitar solo of the theme! And when I heard 'The Da Vinci Code', I felt joy and disappointment. Because I thought I had to give up 'Angels and Demons', but he did both of them!

Unfortunately, I couldn't see his live shows last year, so I cannot review in comparison with them. "Sequel" is a tricky thing. We have to recreate something with innovation or escalation or both in the consistency based on the previous works. Because sometimes we love to see what happens next and meet the characters again, although we love new things and easily get bored. "What does the composer who has great achievements in sequel works do in the second chapter of his tour?", which is an interesting viewpoint. I am searching that sort of helpful review.

Hans talked about his history between performances, expressed himself by performing. He is a tough German man, his compositions are so powerful, their performances were so cool, but near the end of the show, I felt something delicate, something warm. I felt like I found out a new aspect of him. My heart became full.

I wrote a lot of words to describe his show, but maybe I needed only one sentence; the concert ended at 11:43 pm, however, most people were still giving cheers and applause in their seats.

The wind shines from Nîmes with love.