Nicholas Britell

Three-time Academy Award-nominated composer and pianist Nicholas Britell is known for his critically acclaimed scores on feature films with Academy Award winning writer-directors Barry Jenkins and Adam McKay. In 2018, Britell wrote the highly acclaimed score for Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk. Britell received his second Academy Award nomination as well as BAFTA and Critics' Choice nominations for the score and was awarded Best Original Score by numerous critics' groups, including LA, Boston, Chicago, and Washington DC Film Critics Associations, New York Film Critics Online, and the Online Film Critics Association. In 2018, he also wrote the score for McKay's Vice, starring Christian Bale, which went on to receive eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. Britell's most recent film work is the score for Netflix's The King, starring Timothée Chalamet. In 2019, Britell was honored by the World Soundtrack Awards as the Film Composer of the Year for his scores for If Beale Street Could Talk and Vice. In 2016, Britell was responsible for the world-renowned score for Best Picture winner Moonlight, written and directed by Jenkins. Britell received his first Academy Award, Golden Globe, and Critics' Choice nominations for Moonlight as well as the 2016 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Score (Dramatic Feature). The year prior, he wrote the score for McKay's much-nominated The Big Short, based on Michael Lewis's best-selling book. For television, Britell re-teamed with McKay for the HBO series Succession. McKay directed the pilot and executive produces along with writer-showrunner Jesse Armstrong. Britell won an Emmy for Outstanding Original Main Title Theme as well as the 2018 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Score (TV Show/Limited Series) for Succession Season 1. Britell's score and main title theme have become some of the most talked about music for television on social media, with audience demand leading Britell to produce a remix of the main title theme with lyrics from legendary hip-hop artist Pusha-T (their remix ''Puppets" was released in October 2019 by Def Jam Recordings). Britell's upcoming projects include writing the score for Amazon's Underground Railroad series, directed and adapted by Barry Jenkins from Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. He is also composing the score for Succession's upcoming Season 3 on HBO. Britell's music featured in Steve McQueen's Best Picture winning 12 Years A Slave, for which he composed, researched, and arranged the on-camera music, including the violin performances, spiritual songs, work songs, and dances. He went on to work with McQueen on McQueen's art installation Caribs' Leap, which featured as part of the "Master of Light - Robby Müller" retrospective at the Eye film museum in Amsterdam. Other original film score credits include Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton's Battle of the Sexes, for which he also wrote and produced original song, "If I Dare" with singer Sara Bareilles; Natalie Portman's A Tale of Love and Darkness; Adam Leon's Gimme the Loot (winner of the 2012 SXSW Grand Jury Prize); Leon's Tramps; Gary Ross' Free State of Jones, and Jack Pettibone Riccobono's documentary The Seventh Fire. In 2017, Britell won the Discovery of the Year Award at the World Soundtrack Awards in Ghent, Belgium and also received the Distinguished Composer Award from the Middleburg Film Festival. In May 2019, he was awarded - with music supervisor Gabe Hilfer - the first-ever ASCAP Harmony Award celebrating outstanding collaborative achievement between composers and music supervisors for If Beale Street Could Talk. In 2012, he was the recipient of a Henry Mancini Fellowship from the ASCAP Foundation and also won the ASCAP/Doddle Award for Collaborative Achievement. Britell is a Steinway Artist and is also a Creative Associate of the Juilliard School; he speaks often and gives masterclasses at conservatories and universities including the Eastman Conservatory, Harvard University, Columbia University, New York University, the Mannes School of Music, and Vassar College. In December 2018, it was announced that Britell will be part of Esa-Pekka Salonen's newly formed creative collective "brain trust" as Salonen takes the reins as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. His recent public performances have included concerts at London's Barbican Hall, the Million Dollar Theatre in Los Angeles, Chicago's Ravinia, and Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall. As a producer, Britell produced Damien Chazelle's short film Whiplash, which won the Jury Award for Best US Fiction Short at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Following the initial success of the short, he served as co-producer on the Oscar-nominated feature film Whiplash which won Sundance's 2014 Jury Prize and Audience Award. Britell is an honors and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard University, as well as a piano performance graduate of the Juilliard School's Pre-College Division. He returned in May 2016 as the Pre-College's commencement speaker.