Bio
Paul Brill’s compositions for numerous award-winning films, TV series, NPR program themes, and several acclaimed CDs of original and innovative songwriting show that youthful adventures as an herbal smokes salesman, street performer, valet, corporate errand boy, and a marine biology instructor can serve the creative spirit well.
Paul has received 3 EMMY AWARD nominations for his scores for the films, “Full Battle Rattle” (National Geographic), “The Devil Came on Horseback” (Break Thru Films), and “The Trials of Darryl Hunt” (HBO), which was hailed by Variety as “memorably chilling, sounding notes of purest dread.” Young American Recordings notably released the Hunt soundtrack, curated by Brill, featuring selections from his score and original contributions by Andrew Bird, M. Ward, The Last Poets, Dead Prez, Califone, and Mark Kozelek among many others. Paul won the first-ever Best Music Award from the International Documentary Association for his score for the film, “Better this World.” He was recently nominated for a Golden Reel Award for his work on the hit Netflix docu-series, “Bobby Kennedy for President.”
Brill collaborated with Rock legends U2 on the HBO film, “Burma Soldier,” composing a new string arrangement for an acoustic version of their classic song, “Walk On.” He scored the hit documentary, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” the Emmy Award-winning “Page One: Inside the NY Times,” as well as Christy Turlington Burns’ directorial debut, “No Woman, No Cry,” on which he collaborated with songwriter Martha Waignwright, and the film adaptation of the best-selling book, “Freakonomics.”
His recent work includes the Sundance Festival-winning films, “Gideon’s Army,” “Trapped,” and “Love Free or Die,” and the Emmy, DuPont and Peabody Award-winning, 6-hour PBS documentary, “The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross,” with noted historian Henry Louis Gates and additional musical contributions from Wynton Marsalis. He scored Abigail Disney’s directorial debut, the Emmy Award-winning, “The Armor of Light,” Liz Garbus’ Peabody Award-winning HBO documentary, “A Dangerous Son,” and wrote the Theme and incidental music for the much-celebrated, Peabody Award-winning NPR Podcast, “Believed.”
He is also the composer for dozens of TV series, specials and films for Netflix, HBO, Showtime, AMC, A&E, MTV, CNN, History Channel, National Geographic, The Sundance Channel and ESPN, among others. Brill recently made his Off-Broadway debut, composing the score for Gabriel Jason Dean’s “Terminus,” which featured stage legend Deirdre O’Connell and premiered to great acclaim at The New York Theatre Workshop, and his music was performed and featured by Phoenix Chamber Music Society in the Spring of 2018.