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Semmel Concerts’ road stories with Hans Zimmer

Project manager Oliver Rosenwald speaks to IQ about the German composer's current US and forthcoming European tour

By James Hanley on 03 Oct 2024

Oliver Rosenwald


Semmel Concerts’ Oliver Rosenwald has given IQ a glimpse into the world of Hans Zimmer ahead of the Oscar-winning film score composer’s latest European tour.

Zimmer will grace arenas across the continent in 2025 and 2026 with Hans Zimmer Live – The Next Level, which promises a completely new show featuring “groundbreaking electronic soundscapes and a spectacular light production”.

Although project manager Rosenwald remains tight-lipped on the finer details, he is convinced fans will not be disappointed.

“It’s a new tour, a new show, a new concept,” he tells IQ. “It will not be even similar to that what you have seen or experienced before, and I’m 100% sure that everybody will love it. I really hope we will surprise and delight our customers with this one.”

The Next Level will commence in Zimmer’s native Germany at Oberhausen’s Rudolf-Weber Arena on 12 October next year, going on to visit Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, the UK and Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Spain and the UK and Ireland.

“Hans is a super pro and a wonderful human, and he loves to be on tour and to make music”

In 2026, it will also head to Scandinavia, Poland and Spain before wrapping up at Portugal at Lisbon’s MEO Arena on March 31. Rosenwald reports that ticket sales have got off to a strong start.

“Our on-sale went very well: after 48 hours, we added second shows at The O2 in London and in Dublin at the 3Arena. We sold 25,000 tickets in three or four days for La Defense Arena in Paris that indoor stadium, which  I was not expecting. I’m pretty sure that we will add more shows to these two tour legs within the coming weeks.”

CTS Eventim-backed Semmel is co-producing the tour with Los Angeles-based RCI Global, which was founded by Zimmer and Steven Kofsky, while the UK dates are presented alongside Harvey Goldsmith and Kilimanjaro Live. This month marks a decade since the launch of Zimmer’s maiden live show at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo in London.

“For Semmel Concerts, it’s just wonderful,” says Rosenwald. “We started as local promoter for the tour in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 2017, then we produced The World of Hans Zimmer together with him and RCI, and it kept moving forward.

“Hans is a super pro and a wonderful human, and he loves to be on tour and to make music. For me, it’s just a great honour. Sometimes I wake up and can’t believe I get to do this kind of work with such a cool artist.”

“The first 17 shows in the US went on sale with a very interesting model – a TikTok presale – and we sold over 80% of the tickets in 48 hours”

Indeed, the relationship has developed to the extent that the German firm is partnering on Zimmer’s current tour of North America.

“We are super-happy that we can do a tour with him in the US and have the next one in Europe already on sale,” says Rosenwald, speaking to IQ from America. “It’s interesting and also a little bit challenging in parts for a European company to tour a US-based artist through the US with Concerts West, even if Semmel Concerts is part of Eventimlive. It’s a quite interesting combination, but it’s a wonderful opportunity and all the shows are almost sold out.

“We went on sale only four or five months before the tour, so I was a little bit nervous because in Europe we normally have six or eight months, or even a year, to sell it, which was our experience in the past with Hans Zimmer Live. But the first 17 shows in the US went on sale with a very interesting model – a TikTok presale – which was pretty cool, and we sold over 80% of the tickets in 48 hours and added another three shows.”

The North American leg, which concludes at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on 12 October, has been an eye-opening experience for the Semmel team.

“Everything is a little bit different in Europe,” smiles Rosenwald, who reveals hopes of expanding the tour to Asia and Latin America. “But here in the US, we have new situations: with unions, with trucking; there is a different kind of mentality when meeting each other. We have part of our European production crew with us working together with the US-based crew.”

“We decided to bring our Ukrainian orchestra to the US because Hans loves them so much”

He continues: “We decided to bring our Ukrainian orchestra to the US because Hans loves them so much, and it was a tricky process to get these visa and work permits done, time-wise. We started that process as soon as we confirmed the tour in January 2024, but some visas were only approved a few days before people had to leave for the US. That was a little bit challenging, but we got there. We had a very good visa agency and they did a marvellous job.”

More than 300,000 tickets were sold for Zimmer’s 2024 European run, The World of Hans Zimmer Tour – A New Dimension, which marked a new chapter in the concert series as the composer participated as the show’s curator and musical director, rather than performing live on stage himself. Previously, his acclaimed 2023 European tour played to almost 400,000 fans in the spring and was completely sold out.

“It’s not a situation where there’s a big orchestra and the composer is doing his thing; it’s more like a rock show sometimes,” reflects Rosenwald. “It’s the genius behind the music of Dune, or James Bond, or The Lion King, and you would think his normal environment is the studio. But then you see him on the stage and you realise that is also his natural environment. That somehow makes it unique.”

Revisit IQ‘s 2022 feature on Hans Zimmer Live here.

 


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