Nicholas Britell
Three-time Academy Award-nominated, Grammy-nominated and Emmy-winning composer, pianist and producer Nicholas Britell is known for his critically acclaimed scores on feature films with Academy Award winning writer-directors Barry Jenkins and Adam McKay. 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. 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 Beale Street 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 teamed up again with McKay for the Netflix comedy Don’t Look Up starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, where he wrote the score and co-wrote and produced two original songs. Britell won the 2021 Hollywood Music In Media Award for Best Score – Feature Film and received two nominations for Original Song “Just Look Up” and On-Screen Performance for “Just Look Up”, which he co-wrote with Ariana Grande, Scott Mescudi and Taura Stinson. He also won an SCL Award for Outstanding Original Song for a Comedy. As well as receiving Academy Award and BAFTA nominations for Best Original Score and multiple Critics’ Choice nominations, Britell was one of the honorees for American Cinematheque’s inaugural Tribute to the Crafts for his score on Don’t Look Up. Other recent film work includes Disney’s box office hit Cruella, Netflix’s The King, and Universal’s She Said.
For television, 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 for which he re-teamed with McKay who directed the pilot. Britell’s score and main title theme have become some of the most talked about music for television. As the Guardian put it, “Britell composed the definitive TV Theme of the 21st Century.”
Audience demand even led Britell to produce a remix of the Succession 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 has continued his work on Succession with scoring Seasons 2 and 3; he is currently scoring Season 4. His score to Barry Jenkins’ critically acclaimed limited series The Underground Railroad was recognized in 2021 with an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Music Composition. In addition, Britell recently collaborated with Grammy-winning artist Robert Glasper on the score for McKay’s HBO drama series Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. His critically acclaimed score for Lucasfilm’s Star Wars series Andor premiered September 2022 which earned him an SCL nomination for Outstanding Score for a Television Production.
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 2019, Britell was honored by the World Soundtrack Awards as Film Composer of the Year for his scores for If Beale Street Could Talk and Vice. In 2020, the World Soundtrack Awards honored Britell for a second year running, this time with the TV Composer of the Year Award for Succession. In 2021, Britell along with co-writers including Florence Welch, won the World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Song for “Call Me Cruella”. 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. In 2022, the SCL awarded Britell with their Ambassador Award.
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, USC, Berklee College of Music, and Vassar College. In December 2018, it was announced that Britell would be part of Esa-Pekka Salonen's newly formed creative collective "brain trust" as Salonen took the reins as music director of the San Francisco Symphony. Britell’s public performances have included concerts at London’s Barbican Hall, Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, Chicago’s Ravinia, and Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.
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.