You may not be aware of Andy Milburn’s work, but chances are you’ve heard it repeatedly. With fellow composer Tom Hajdu, the 37-year-old Houston native has written music for commercials (Nike, Coke, Volvo), television programs (TV Nation, Homicide, Liquid Television), and feature films (Natural Born Killers, JFK, Arlington Road). The pair started collaborating while studying music at Princeton University, and in 1987 they formed the music production company tomandandy, which has offices in New York and Los Angeles. This month you can keep an ear out for Milburn’s scores for the film Waking the Dead and the new Barry Levinson television series, The Beat, both of which came out in March. Despite his impressive résumé, does it ever bother Milburn that his work is never the featured attraction? Not at all. “It’s not to say that we don’t love music for music’s sake, but it’s wild the amount of room you have to be expressive while supporting a narrative experience,” he says. “You just have to give up the prejudice that the audience is attending for your particular composition and nothing else.”
