Biography
Emerging in the early years of the new millennium as a sincere, roots-oriented vocalist and tunesmith, Paul Brill built a thriving livelihood scoring projects for the screen. His initial outing, Halve the Light, arrived in 2002 and established a dedicated following among Americana listeners, yet within four years he had shifted toward consistent scoring assignments, first attracting notice through his contributions to The Trials of Darryl Hunt in 2006 and The Devil Came on Horseback the following year, each of which earned an Emmy nomination; a third nod arrived in 2008 for National Geographic’s Full Battle Rattle. He supplied U2 with a string arrangement for their song “Walk On” on the 2010 documentary Burma Soldier, an association that led to further prominent assignments including Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Page One: Inside the NY Times, PBS’s Many Rivers to Cross: The African Americans, and the Peabody Award-winning A Dangerous Son. Brill also provided the score for NPR’s Peabody-winning podcast Believed. Although his composing schedule reduced his output as a recording artist, he still issued occasional collections such as Breezy in 2012 and The Cost of Believing in 2023.
Born and raised in New York, Paul Brill began performing after relocating to Vermont. He remained only long enough to sharpen his skills before departing the state’s harsh winters for Los Angeles. There he formed the band Envelope with acquaintances from Vermont; the name later became SF Envelope to distinguish it from another similarly titled group. The ensemble lingered in Los Angeles, playing scattered dates, but momentum built once the members relocated to San Francisco in the mid-1990s. SF Envelope crisscrossed the country repeatedly and, after completing a demo, triggered an extended major-label bidding war whose duration ultimately caused the group to disband.
Disheartened, Brill returned to New York, stepped away from the music business, and joined the East Harlem School at Exodus, where his duties encompassed teaching, fundraising, and assorted other responsibilities supporting underprivileged students. Encouraged by Portland, Oregon friends Dave Camp and Nancy Hess, he channeled that experience into recording new material and reentering the industry. Brill invited Camp to New York City to produce the sessions, and with backing from the bluegrass group Milkweed they captured the tracks that became Halve the Light, issued on Brill’s own Scarlet Shame Records in 2001. While touring behind the album in 2002, Camp and Hess urged him to record again, this time at their Portland studio. In four days the trio assembled an EP follow-up also titled Sisters; the full-length Sisters appeared two months later in 2003.
For the complete Sisters album, Brill brought in Giovanni Fusco, who had engineered Halve the Light, to produce, completing the record quickly though with greater embellishment than on earlier releases. Around the same period he participated in Little Kids Rock, an initiative backed by figures such as Paul Simon and Bonnie Raitt that supplied free music instruction and instruments to public-school children. Serving the organization as a fundraiser, Brill helped release a collection of student-composed songs titled Little Kids Rock: Coast to Coast on Scarlet Shame. He later founded and ran the Brooklyn recording studio Sterling Society Social Club.
Brill issued his third full-length, New Pagan Love Song, in October 2004; by the time Harpooner appeared in 2006 he had already begun establishing himself as a composer. The score for The Trials of Darryl Hunt, released as an album in 2007, brought an Emmy nomination, as did The Devil Came on Horseback and Full Battle Rattle. He soon accumulated regular film and television credits including Freakonomics, Steven Seagal: Lawman, National Geographic Explorer, The First 48, and After the First 48. Additional highlights included the U2 collaboration on Burma Soldier and the International Documentary Association’s Best Music Award for Better This World in 2011.
Brill resumed his singer/songwriter path with Breezy in 2012. He continued scoring films such as Abigail Disney’s The Armor of Light and Liz Garbus’ A Dangerous Son while also moving into podcasts with NPR’s Believed. In 2018 he composed the music for Gabriel Jason Dean’s off-Broadway play Terminus.
Eleven years after Breezy, Brill released The Cost of Believing, an exploration of isolation, in 2023.
Born and raised in New York, Paul Brill began performing after relocating to Vermont. He remained only long enough to sharpen his skills before departing the state’s harsh winters for Los Angeles. There he formed the band Envelope with acquaintances from Vermont; the name later became SF Envelope to distinguish it from another similarly titled group. The ensemble lingered in Los Angeles, playing scattered dates, but momentum built once the members relocated to San Francisco in the mid-1990s. SF Envelope crisscrossed the country repeatedly and, after completing a demo, triggered an extended major-label bidding war whose duration ultimately caused the group to disband.
Disheartened, Brill returned to New York, stepped away from the music business, and joined the East Harlem School at Exodus, where his duties encompassed teaching, fundraising, and assorted other responsibilities supporting underprivileged students. Encouraged by Portland, Oregon friends Dave Camp and Nancy Hess, he channeled that experience into recording new material and reentering the industry. Brill invited Camp to New York City to produce the sessions, and with backing from the bluegrass group Milkweed they captured the tracks that became Halve the Light, issued on Brill’s own Scarlet Shame Records in 2001. While touring behind the album in 2002, Camp and Hess urged him to record again, this time at their Portland studio. In four days the trio assembled an EP follow-up also titled Sisters; the full-length Sisters appeared two months later in 2003.
For the complete Sisters album, Brill brought in Giovanni Fusco, who had engineered Halve the Light, to produce, completing the record quickly though with greater embellishment than on earlier releases. Around the same period he participated in Little Kids Rock, an initiative backed by figures such as Paul Simon and Bonnie Raitt that supplied free music instruction and instruments to public-school children. Serving the organization as a fundraiser, Brill helped release a collection of student-composed songs titled Little Kids Rock: Coast to Coast on Scarlet Shame. He later founded and ran the Brooklyn recording studio Sterling Society Social Club.
Brill issued his third full-length, New Pagan Love Song, in October 2004; by the time Harpooner appeared in 2006 he had already begun establishing himself as a composer. The score for The Trials of Darryl Hunt, released as an album in 2007, brought an Emmy nomination, as did The Devil Came on Horseback and Full Battle Rattle. He soon accumulated regular film and television credits including Freakonomics, Steven Seagal: Lawman, National Geographic Explorer, The First 48, and After the First 48. Additional highlights included the U2 collaboration on Burma Soldier and the International Documentary Association’s Best Music Award for Better This World in 2011.
Brill resumed his singer/songwriter path with Breezy in 2012. He continued scoring films such as Abigail Disney’s The Armor of Light and Liz Garbus’ A Dangerous Son while also moving into podcasts with NPR’s Believed. In 2018 he composed the music for Gabriel Jason Dean’s off-Broadway play Terminus.
Eleven years after Breezy, Brill released The Cost of Believing, an exploration of isolation, in 2023.
Albums
