Hans zimmer lisa gerrard klaus badelt biography
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Reverb laden, emotion-filled solo female vocals were one of the defining sounds of film music in the 2000s, and echoes of Gerrard’s pioneering singing can be heard in everything from Revenge of the Sith to The Passion of the Christ.
But the effect was never bettered than by Gladiator and Gerrard, who brought an innate sense of melody and expression that the imitators only mimic.
Take note, too of the CGI face of actor Oliver Reed, who died during production, giving necessity to an invention that predates Rogue One’s Peter Cushing or Gemini Man’s Will Smith by almost two decades.
Fittingly, Gladiator’s music was also aided by new digital tools, as Zimmer demoed compositions for the film using virtual orchestral instruments (audible in the track ‘The Gladiator Waltz’ on the 20th Anniversary release), and director Ridley Scott and editor Pietro Scalia downed tools and moved the film’s editing suite to Zimmer’s music studio during post-production.
Since then, Badelt has been working on a number of his own film and television projects such as The Time Machine and K-19: The Widowmaker. He also collaborated with other Media Ventures composers, such as Harry Gregson-Williams, John Powell, and Zimmer; and mentored several others like Ramin Djawadi and Steve Jablonsky.
While collaborating with Zimmer, Badelt contributed to the Oscar-nominated scores for The Thin Red Line and The Prince of Egypt, and wrote music for many well known directors including Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Terrence Malick, John Woo, Kathryn Bigelow, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Werner Herzog, Sean Penn, Gore Verbinski, Michael Bay and Steven Spielberg.
Badelt co-wrote and co-produced the score to Hollywood box office hit Gladiator, directed by Ridley Scott, along with Zimmer and singer/composer Lisa Gerrard.
It’s a film score in transition. Since then, Klaus has been working on a number of his own innovative film and television projects, that include Time Machine and K-19 The Widowmaker, as well as collaborating with Zimmer and other Media Ventures composers such as Harry Gregson-Williams (Enemy of the State) and John Powell (Face/Off).
With Zimmer, Klaus has contributed music to the Oscar-nominated scores for Thin Red Line and The Prince of Egypt, and written music for such directors and producers as Gore Verbinski, Kathryn Bigelow, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Terrence Mallick, John Woo, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Tom Cruise and Sean Penn.
Klaus co-produced the score to Roman epic Gladiator directed by Ridley Scott, while writing portions of the score with Golden Globe nominated singer/composer Lisa Gerrard (The Insider).
He started his musical career composing for movies and commercials in his homeland. In the end, though, the Gladiator score in its entirety is credited to both Zimmer and Gerrard, such was her influence. “Even though she didn’t write the main theme, her presence and contributions were very influential”, Zimmer said in 2006. Gasparyan’s duduk and Gerrard’s vocals gesture to a type of music-making that at the time we were unused to hearing from Hollywood, but ultimately, Gladiator’s score transcends questions of genre or setting.
“What we do in life echoes in eternity”, declares Crowe’s Maximus in one of Gladiator’s many quotable moments.
Having contributed music to Gladiator, Mission: Impossible II and Michael Kamen's score for X-Men, Badelt was involved in the three most successful movies in 2000. He also wrote the music for the closing ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and was commissioned to write an opera about China's First Emperor, to be premiered in 2015.
Klaus worked on the soundtrack for The Promise for almost 6 months.
Badelt also collaborated with Zimmer on other successful films, such as The Pledge, and 2001 blockbusters Hannibal and Pearl Harbor.
There’s precedent here, too. He also collaborated with Hans Zimmer on the Sean Penn-helmed drama The Pledge, as well as the 2001 blockbusters Hannibal and Pearl Harbor. Independently, he is known for his work on Hollywood blockbuster films such as Equilibrium, K-19: The Widowmaker, Basic, and TMNT, and for his work in French cinema.
Badelt was born in Frankfurt, West Germany.
Instead, Gladiator has a modern sound, one incubated in the action movie soundtracks Zimmer was then known for and expanded in a musical soup of classical influences and the euphony of Lisa Gerrard’s one-of-a-kind voice.
There’s also an element of the digital to all this, too.
These classics use thick brass fanfares and sophisticated string melodies to suggest a sense of ancient Roman-ness: their music is still sometimes brought out for Olympic ceremonies and celebrations of physical prowess and civilisation. Twenty years old this year, and the winner of five Academy Awards – including Best Picture – Gladiator fused contemporary big picture aesthetics with the historical drama of time gone by, paving the way for Game of Thrones, 300, Troy, and Vikings, and practically any other film or series involving swords, sandals, and dirt.
The song which can be heard in the movie's end credits is an ancient folk song in China, and very few people can still sing it. “She was more than just a soloist”.
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Then there’s the contributions of composer Klaus Badelt, a colleague at Zimmer’s Remote Control Productions film score company (then known as Media Ventures), who provided additional music for Gladiator.
In 1998, Oscar-winning film composer Hans Zimmer invited Badelt to work at Media Ventures in Santa Monica, California, his studio co-owned by Jay Rifkin. With Gladiator, Mission: Impossible 2 and X-Men, Klaus contributed music to the three most successful movies in 2000. One of his more famous and popular scores was for the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
In 2004, Klaus founded his own film music company, Theme Park Studios, in Santa Monica.