Biography

Three-time Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning composer, pianist, and producer Nicholas Britell is known for his critically-acclaimed scores, including those for Adam McKay’s 2021 Don’t Look Up, Barry Jenkins’s 2018 If Beale Street Could Talk, and the 2017 Academy Award Best Picture winner, Moonlight. Mr. Britell received Academy Award nominations for those three films as well as BAFTA and Critics Choice nominations for Don’t Look Up and If Beale Street Could Talk. He received Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice nominations as well as the 2016 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Score (Dramatic Feature) for Moonlight. The year prior, he wrote the score for Adam McKay’s The Big Short, which marked the start of his collaboration with the Academy Award winning writer-director-producer. Mr. Britell has the distinction of winning Film Composer of the Year, Television Composer of the Year, Discovery of the Year, as well as winning Best Original Song Written for a Film at the World Soundtrack Awards all within the past five years. His recent and upcoming film projects include the score for Benjamin Millepied’s directorial debut, Carmen, and for Barry Jenkins’s The Lion King for Walt Disney Pictures.

Mr. Britell is also the mastermind behind some of television’s most beloved scores, notably the Succession main title. Other television scores he has composed include his Emmy-nominated score for Barry Jenkins’s The Underground Railroad and the score for HBO’s Winning Time, which he co-composed with Grammy-winning artist Robert Glasper. His score for Lucasfilm’s Star Wars series Andor premiered in September on Disney+.

In addition to his work as a San Francisco Symphony Collaborative Partner, Mr. Britell is a Steinway Artist and a creative associate of the Juilliard School.