The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in California has become more than just a home for your favorite rock music acts, EDM artists, and annoying hipsters over these past few years. Lately, they’ve expanded to include composers performing live as well. On Sunday, April 16, film scorer extraordinaire Hans Zimmer took the stage and performed the music he wrote for some of his most well known films, accompanied by a live orchestra. Of course, Zimmer performed perhaps his most famous piece of music, from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. You can watch his entire Dark Knight performance in the video down below:

Aside from his performance of The Dark Knight music, Zimmer performed several other themes from his most well known films, including the Jack Sparrow theme from Pirates of the Caribbean, music from The Lion King, Gladiator, and of course, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, maybe his most well known score outside of the Batman films. (For more on Zimmer’s epic Inception performance, be sure to click on our full story here).

About ten minutes into his set, Zimmer stopped for a moment to address the crowed, and said “It takes a special kind of crazy person to bring an orchestra out into the desert… But it had to be done, didn’t it?” At one point during the performance, he also invited Pharrell onstage for his song “Freedom.” The duo have collaborated extensively before, most recently on the Hidden Figures score.

Zimmer’s Coachella set is but the first part of what will soon be a worldwide concert tour. By all accounts, Zimmer’s performance was easily one of the highlights of the entire festival, even if some inebriated twenty-somethings with flowers in their hair seemed confused on how they were supposed to dance to a symphonic score.

What did you think of Zimmer stealing all the Coachella thunder from everyone else? Let us know your thoughts down below in the comments.

Image: Coachella

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