Still blowing up: The Pitt composer Gavin Brivik on scoring for TV, collabs with Andrew Bird, and Faces of Death

If you’ve been watching HBO Max’s medical drama The Pitt (and given that the show averages 12 million viewers per episode, those chances are pretty good), you may have noticed a new Andrew Bird song playing over the credits of the show’s sixth episode, which aired February 12.

“Need Someone” was co-created with The Pitt’s composer, Gavin Brivik, a KC-area native and UMKC alum who’s probably a familiar name to Pitch readers by this point. We first spoke with Brivik in 2021, when he’d composed the score for the indie film Wild Indian. Two years later, we discussed his work for Daniel Goldhaber’s eco-thriler How to Blow up a Pipeline.

This year may prove to be Brivik’s biggest yet. In addition to his work for The Pitt, he’s composed the score for Sender, a trippy mystery with an impressive cast (including fellow Overland Park native David Dastmalchian) set to premiere at this year’s SXSW in Austin. In April, Brivik’s music will be on our screens and in our ears again with the long-awaited premiere of Goldhaber and Issa Mazzei’s Faces of Death (this marks Brivik’s third collaboration with Goldhaber — he also created the music for 2018’s Cam).

With so much going on, it seemed like high time we checked back in. Brivik talked with The Pitch about the experience of working on The Pitt, his recent collaboration with Bird, and everything else he’s been up to lately.

The Pitch: So, you’ve been pretty busy lately! Congratulations.

Gavin Brivik: It has felt that way! Things are moving fast but I’m very grateful for it all.

You’ve been working mainly in independent films up to this point, but The Pitt is a change of pace from that. What’s the process like getting a job composing for a major show like this?

The Pitt showrunners had done a big call for composers, and my agents sent in my work for consideration. They were actually looking for a more experimental, innovative approach for the music on the show. I remember getting the text from them, and they were looking for found sounds or experimental ambient music. I sent them stuff from How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Faces of Death. I think they chose about 10 of us out of the applicants and had us watch episode one, write music to a few scenes and interview with them.

My pitch to them…it was almost talking myself out of a job because I didn’t think the show needed a score, and they said “We totally agree.” Basically, I thought, “What would it sound like if the medical equipment was making the score?” Our whole idea was for the music to embed itself into the soundscape of the hospital. Pitchfork and other outlets wrote about it like, “There’s no music,” which makes it feel like I’m doing what I pitched.

When I think of TV music, I tend to think of themes rather than scores, but in recent years that seems to have changed somewhat, in that shows now have full scores, not just themes, or in the case of The Pitt, no identifiable main theme at all. 

It’s interesting because I think that still exists. Severance is probably the best thematic-based show I can think of right now. I almost think it’s genre-based. I love thematic TV shows like Severance and The White Lotus, which have prominent scores. But other shows, including The Pitt, have more ambient scores.

The Pitt is so in the moment, with each episode being one hour happening in real time. Keeping the score more sound-design based, when you listen to it on its own, it’s tense and almost ambient-aggressive, weird machinery sounds. That stuff plays during intense surgery scenes. I think it’s them trying to do something fresh and original in that space.

I still feel like TV shows in general are oscillating between the two (thematic and ambient). Even shows like Task and Pluribus still have bigger scores, with some themes in them. I’m not sure if it’s a divided line, but I’m hoping shows go back to having more prominent themes. Same thing with film scores. We went too far in one direction where it’s rebelling against old-school themes and now we’re coming back to it.

How did you get to collaborate with Andrew Bird on a song this season? I’ve been a fan since I was in high school, so I think that feels like a pretty big deal.

It’s so funny, I’ve also loved him since I was in high school and right after listening to all those early albums. I’ve always dreamt of collaborating with someone like him, but nobody from The Pitt knew who he was. Everybody kind of gave me a blank stare when I told them about it.

I had written these instrumentals for the end credits, and I had lots of other versions and variations and other songs. For season one I collaborated with a singer-songwriter named Taji for the credits song.

This season, I thought it’d be amazing if I could get an even bigger collaborator to come on, and I wrote a dream list to my agent. Andrew Bird was the top name. As a musician and instrumentalist, he does everything I love. He can play every instrument and sing and write beautiful lyrics. Amazingly, my agent was like, “I represent him.” He had signed with my agent to do film and TV work more recently.

My agent sent him my songs, and no joke, Andrew just responded directly to me with a voice memo of him singing on top of the song and it was perfect. Legitimately, it brought me to tears, it was so damn good. The lyrics were so motivated by the scene it plays over, and everything in the show. To have idolized this guy and hear him singing over one of my tracks, it was amazing. We booked a session at a recording studio and reworked the song together. He gave me a lot of creativity over his own stuff. He let me edit his whistling solo and orchestrate the song, and would text me notes and feedback. It felt so cool to be producing the song with him and get his insight into what would make it better.

“I got to edit an Andrew Bird whistle solo” isn’t a thing a ton of people get to say.

It was surreal being in the studio with him watching him do it. He’d do versions and be like “what do you think of this one” and I had to get over my imposter syndrome and put on my composer hat. He was so game for that. It was very cool and validating to have him like my choices. Also he’s the kindest guy. He gave me a shared credit on the song, which was so generous. Sometimes when you co-write with bigger artists, they’ll get the whole credit. That says a lot about him.

You’ve got a lot of other work that’s also getting a spotlight this year. What can you tell us about Faces of Death?

I’m so happy that IFC and Shudder really love the movie. It’s going to be the biggest theatrical release in the company’s history, and it’ll be the biggest release of my own work theatrically so far. Musically, it’s one of my most experimental scores. It’s so different than The Pitt. This is high energy, distorted hyperpop with artists like Cecile Believe, who’s a vocalist in Sophie’s albums, and Umru, who’s produced for Charli XCX. The score is so weird and crazy, I can’t believe I got away with it. I also got to bring in my former UMKC professor, Paul Rudy, to work on it, and (KC-based musician and How to Blow Up a Pipeline collaborator) Morgan Greenwood to work on it.

And then there’s Sender, which is about to premiere at SXSW. How did you come to that project?

This director, Russell Goldman, actually found me through a test screening of Faces of Death. He’s friends with Daniel and asked him, “Who did the score? I want to hire them for my movie.”

The cool thing is that Faces of Death feels parallel to How to Blow Up a Pipeline because it’s electronic. They share some inspiration. Sender is almost an acoustic score where I’m using prepared piano and free jazz drums. It’s a left turn from my previous work, and feels exciting.

I got to express a different side to my music. I’m not constantly doing the big synth thing, which I do love to do. That’s still there, but there’s free jazz saxophone, drums going crazy, piano with weird stuff stuck between the strings. It was fun to play with a different kind of color palette.

I give the director so much credit. It was his first feature. He used to be Jamie Lee Curtis’ assistant, and she really believed in him and knew he was trying to make this movie. He directed it like he was making his fifth film. The process was so eloquent and refined. I wrote music from the script before they even shot, and the actors would listen to the music on set which was really cool. That’s rare for a first-time director to do that. It was a dream project on all fronts. He kept allowing me to go weirder and crazier with it without holding me back. I’m used to feeling a little put in a box, and Russell felt, if anything, so open minded that it made it so exciting. I think it’s my best score.