Andrew Bird (left) and Gavin Brivik accept an Emmy for the song "Need Someone" from the HBO Max drama "The Pitt."
The Television Academy
Though singer-songwriter (and Chicago native) Andrew Bird was trained in classical violin, beginning at age 4, he eventually “realized that I wasn’t cut out for it,” Bird said in a recent interview for “The PBS NewsHour.” “I was too — I think too — a little too individualistic.” ‘
Bird will make his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jacomo Bairos, in concerts Nov. 13-14. The program, which marks the 20th anniversary of Bird’s disc “The Mysterious Production of Eggs,” will feature performances of the complete album, arranged for full orchestra, followed by a suite of fan-favorite tracks from Bird’s nearly three-decade catalog.
Despite his creative detour, “classical music is in my roots,” said Bird, who calls himself “a one-man orchestra of the imagination, singing and whistling.” He studied violin performance at Northwestern University, but spent much of his free time during college years playing “pick-up sessions at local pubs and jazz clubs.”
His father tried to push Bird back on track. "My dad would ask me: ’Are sure you don’t want to play the Bruch Violin Concerto with the Dubuque Symphony’?"
His music-culture immersion led Bird to create 18 albums that cross many boundaries and genres. “Staying in one place too long becomes a drag,” Bird told PBS. And in the PBS interview, one fan adds: ”That he [Bird] can’t be categorized is the greatest thing about him."
And now he’s on his way to EGOT status. He just won his first Emmy for the song “Need Someone,“ composed with Gavin Brivik, for the HBO Max series ”The Pitt.“ It won in the category of outstanding original music and lyrics, beating out works by Lady Gaga and Trey Parker of ”South Park" fame.
The song appears in the sixth episode (“12:00 P.M.”) of the series’ second season as fan-favorite character Louie Cloverfield (Ernest Harden Jr.), the alcoholic with a heart of gold, dies with the Pittsburgh Trauma Center staff at his side.
Backstage at the Emmys, Bird said that the song addresses “the universal need we all have not to die alone.”
And composing it was a wrenching task. "It takes everything you’ve learned over a whole lifetime to sit down and write a song in an hour," Bird said. "I absolutely wrote [’Need Someone’] for that scene. Every word.”
