Revered as one of the leading young, soundtrack composers of his generation, Nicholas Britell deals in grand, regal grace and evocative, swelling, orchestrations to create acclaimed musical scores for major Hollywood movies including 'If Beale Street Could Talk', 'Moonlight' and 'Vice'.
Growing up in New York City, he was first drawn to music at the age of five when watching cinematic masterpiece 'Chariots of Fire', begging his parents for piano lessons so that he could learn to play the theme tune. Setting his sights on becoming a concert pianist, he studied at the Julliard Music School from the age of 14 until 18, cutting his teeth performing in cocktail lounges and hotel bars and playing keyboards in a jazzy, instrumental hip-hop band called The Witness Protection Program. He also worked as a Wall Street trader and managed a hedge fund, but continued to create his own compositions and progressed from making telephone hold music that would play when lines were busy at restaurants to scoring movies made by film director friends including Nick Lavell and appearing as a piano player in Natalie Portman's short film 'Eve'. The financial crash led to him turning to music full time in 2010, and he gained significant recognition for his work on the 2012 PBS documentary 'Haiti: Where Did the Money Go?', before he composed his first full movie score for the independent film 'Gimme the Loot' made by school friend Adam Leon. He also wrote music that was performed by actors in 'Twelve Years a Slave' and worked on major movies such as 'The Big Short' and 'A Tale of Love and Darkness', before he composed the soundtrack to acclaimed coming-of-age drama 'Moonlight' by using a hip-hop production technique known as chopped and screwed where he slowed down, pitch shifted and warped different pieces of music at different moments in the film.
He worked again with director Barry Jenkins on the adaptation of James Baldwin's novel 'If Beale Street Could Talk' in 2018, using the collective sound of a rich, aching cello ensemble to capture the film's themes of love and injustice. The HBO comedy drama series 'Succession' and tennis biopic 'Battle of the Sexes' were other big Britell projects before he received his third Academy Award nomination for his symphonic soundtrack to 'Vice', which told the life story of former Vice President Dick Cheney.