In a touching moment, Hans Zimmer paused his concert at the O2 Arena in London to honor a Ukrainian pianist who played the theme that Zimmer composed for Inception as air raid sirens went off in the background. Hans Zimmer is an Academy Award-winning film composer who is most well known for his collaborations with Christopher Nolan and his work on several DC films. Zimmer's recent groundbreaking score for Dune is also up for an Academy Award at this year's ceremony. But since he's touring around Europe on the Hans Zimmer Live tour where he performs with his band and orchestra, he won't be in attendance.
Much of the world's political attention is still zeroed in on Eastern Europe, where Ukraine continues to combat the Russian invasion that started on February 24 and has seen a variety of global responses from sanctions on Russian oligarchs to Netflix suspending service in Russia. The world has watched in horror as around 3 million Ukrainians flee the country as refugees, and millions more become displaced. It's with this background that a Ukrainian pianist named Alex was originally recorded emphatically playing "Time," the main theme to Zimmer's Inception score as air raid sirens went off, by National Geographic photographer John Stanmeyer.
The video from Stanmeyer was shared with Zimmer by his daughter and he was so touched by the Ukrainian's performance in light of everything happening that he stopped his concert in London to play the video and honor Alex's performance on the giant screen in the O2 Arena. In a personal video message that Zimmer sent to Alex that the pianist shared on Instagram, Zimmer stated that he was "just astonished by [the] rendition of 'Time' in the time of crisis" and that the performance "absolutely lifts the spirits of the Ukrainian people." Zimmer affirmed his support for Ukraine while proudly showing off a scarf with the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag. Watch Alex's Instagram posts with the video from Zimmer and Stanmeyer's original video below:
Alex's post also included videos taken of Zimmer during the concert in London where he stopped the performance of "Time" to play Stanmeyer's video of Alex. Audience members can even be heard cheering and clapping even over the high-pitched sounds of the air raid sirens as the video plays on. It's explicitly clear the sizable impact that Alex had on Zimmer that he was willing to dedicate time from his concert to honor the Ukrainian and hopefully get the pianist's message in front of even more than the 15,000 people in attendance in London.
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It seems that the conflict has united professionals from all sorts of industries and political backgrounds to condemn the atrocities and war crimes committed by Russian forces against Ukraine in a rare act of unity. Zimmer joins other film professionals such as Arnold Schwarzenegger in commenting on Ukraine, but his voice speaks to the power that music has to cross borders and unite people all over the world. More and more stories continue to emerge of Ukrainians playing music to cope with the daily tragedies and uplift their fellow Ukrainians as they struggle to survive this war. While Hans Zimmer won't be at the Oscars he will have a pre-taped video in the event that he wins, and it will be interesting to see if he uses that opportunity or future concerts to continue speaking on this subject that has so clearly touched his heart.
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