New American Songbook
COMPOSER NICHOLAS BRITELL IS STEADILY SHAPING THE SOUND OF MODERN American storytelling, one project at a time. Britell is probably best known as the composer who scored Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, both of which netted him Oscar nominations. In 2019, he was named Film Composer of the Year by the World Soundtrack Academy for If Beale Street Could Talk. Two years earlier, the same organization named him Discovery of the Year.
Britell is the intangible presence who takes the sensitive, heartfelt work of director Barry Jenkins and translates its tender emotion into sound. He’s presently collaborating with Jenkins again on the director’s limited-series adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel The Underground Railroad.
“The process is very experimental and it starts from that first moment of sensitivity,” Britell explained during a
