Photo: Jim Dyson (Getty Images)
The concert tour garnering the most buzz this spring hasn’t been Rock ‘n Roll of Famers the Red Hot Chili Peppers nor king of the pop charts Bruno Mars, but Hans Zimmer. The 10-time Academy Award nominee (he won for 1995’s Best Original Musical Score for The Lion King) has been making a lot of noise at concert venues and music festivals across Europe and North America.
Also: Interview | Blade Runner 2049 Composer Jóhann Jóhannsson Puts Iceland on the Music Map
Zimmer, who got his start as a member of The Buggles, the one-hit wonder band best known for their MTV-defining hit, “Video Killed the Radio Star”, has emerged from behind the movie curtain to dazzle crowds with a scantily clad 70-piece orchestra that brings to life his signature soundtracks for Pirates of the Caribbean, Gladiator, and Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
You can just see the faces of concert promoters with money symbols in their dead eyes, mocking up whiteboards with composers to play their festivals. Well, I’ve done the heavy lifting for them, rounding up eight Movie Composers Made for Music Festivals.
Composers Who Should Play Music Festivals
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John Williams
The GOAT of music composers has played the soundtrack to our childhoods for the past forty years (Jaws, Superman, Jurassic Park). Imagine Williams taking us to galaxies far, far away under a starry sky at San Francisco's Outside Lands just a hop, skip and Uber ride from George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. Destiny, it seems like.
Photo: Rich Fury (Getty Images)
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John Carpenter
The cult movie auteur has found a second career as a touring musician playing live film scores from his movies (Halloween, The Thing, Christine). The man who made Escape From New York playing the Governor's Ball would be the most ironically hip thing like ever.
Photo: Jim Dyson (Getty Images)
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Jóhann Jóhannsson
The Icelandic composer has earned an Oscar-nod for Theory of Everything, while partnering up with director Denis Villeneuve for Sicario, Arrival, and the upcoming Blade Runner 2049. His ethereal and industrial electronic beats would go perfectly at a post-apocalyptic dance festival like Electric Daisy Carnival.
Photo: Kevork Djansezian (Getty Images)
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Cliff Martinez
Ready to have your mind blown? The man behind such epic soundscapes for Drive, Spring Breakers and Contagion, was also a drummer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers (earning a Rock 'N Hall of Fame nod with them). Martinez's cyber-punk, neon-lit, ambient electronica is made for Miami's Ultra.
Photo: Dustin Finkelstein (Getty Images)
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Vangelis
The reclusive Greek composer's avant garde synth-based compositions for Blade Runner are still being referenced almost forty years later. How about a truth being stranger than fiction performance at Los Angeles in 2019 (the same year Blade Runner is set in) at FYF Festival.
Photo: Rob Verhorst (Getty Images)
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T-Bone Burnett
The former touring guitarist for Bob Dylan is a musician's musician, who plays, produces and oversees soundtracks for such films as O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Walk the Line, and Crazy Heart (which earned him an Oscar win). His classic American roots music would be right at home at Bonnaroo.
Photo: Scott Dudelson (Getty Images)
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Ennio Morricone
Since the 88 year-old doesn't travel to the states anymore, how about a headlining slot at Barcelona's Primavera Festival, where the legendary Italian composer first made a splash by scoring Sergio Leone’s epic westerns (Fistful of Dollars, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Once Upon A Time in the West)?
Photo: Giuseppe Ciccia (Getty Images)
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Danny Elfman
The Oingo Boingo frontman went from the top of the pop charts to being the most wanted music composer in Hollywood (Nightmare Before Christmas, Spider-Man) who created arguably the best TV theme of-all-time for The Simpsons. Elfman's madcap scores would set a nostalgic mood at Chicago's spirited Lollapalooza.
Photo: Jenny Anderson (Getty Images)
