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Nicholas Urie
As an active arranger and composer Urie has been commissioned to write music for concerts, recordings, and television broadcasts. Performances and commissions by: Kurt Elling, John Scofield, Donny McCaslin, Dave Samuels, the Boston Symphony Orchestra community chamber concert series, the Metropole Orchestra, the Boston Pops, NPS Channel 3, Skavlan TV, the Klüvers Big Band, the NDR Big Band, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra, and the Clazz Ensemble, among others.
Both of Urie’s CD’s of original music, Excerpts from an Online Dating Service (2009) and My Garden (2012), earned wide critical acclaim. "All About Jazz" praised Urie's sui generis saying, “Urie does not simply blow off the dust of the large jazz ensemble, he sandblasts it off with Uranium.” At the same time, Urie’s unique ability to transform unlikely source material through subtle musical treatment has been widely noted. “Downbeat” magazine observed that, “Urie succeeds wonderfully in transferring the grime of skid row to the sheen of the concert hall without sacrificing any of the bite and desperate humanity.”
Awards
2003 ASCAP young jazz composer's award
Gear
judy green staff paper
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Nicholas Urie: My Garden
by C. Michael Bailey
Nicholas Urie made an impressive footprint with the release of his Excerpts From and Online Dating Service (Red Piano Records, 2009). The composer/arranger modus operandi changes little on My Garden, where he takes his texts from the poetry of West Coast writer Charles Bukowski (1920-1994), and weaves them into provocative and often violent tapestries of contemporary big band sounds. Bukowski was a gutter poet laureate, who at the height of his popularity, labored in a Post Office ...
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by Matt Marshall
With My Garden, an album of songs for large ensemble with poetry by Charles Bukowski, composer/conductor Nicholas Urie continues his exploration into modern-day isolation and disconnect begun on 2009's Excerpts From an Online Dating Service (Red Piano Records). On Excerpts, Urie invited the listener to hear ("imagine" might be more fitting) a certain poetry in the missives he lifted from actual online dating sites. Fit into Urie's jumping or eerily longing scores and sung with complete conviction by Christine Correa, ...
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by Wilbert Sostre
The combination of poetry and music is not new. Spain and Latin America have a great tradition of poetry musicalization. As part of the Nueva Trova style of the 1970s, singers like Silvio Rodriguez, Mercedes Sosa, Atahaulpa Yupanqui and Roy Brown set the poetry of some of Latin America's best writers to music. Being that jazz is mostly an instrumental form, its fusion with poetry is not that common, which is one of the aspects that makes Nicholas ...
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by Mark Corroto
First thoughts of accompanying the poetry of Charles Bukowski to music are predisposed to the techniques of Tom Waits and his post-beatnik circus. Composer/arranger Nicholas Urie takes another path, instead, orchestrating his 12-piece big band towards an alternative rendition and deeper understanding.Like his previous Excerpts From An Online Dating Service (Red Piano, 2009) ,where he put personal ads to music, Urie employs vocalist Christine Correa to sometimes sing, and sometimes speak the poet laureate of American lowlife's words. ...
read moreNicholas Urie: Excerpts From An Online Dating Service
by Eyal Hareuveni
Young and gifted American composer/conductor Nicholas Urie had a brilliant idea. Basing his debut suite, Excerpts From An Online Dating Service, on real Internet personal ads collected from cities all over United States and Canada, Urie attempts to transform these coded messages into poetic statements about the current human condition. This is implied by poet and performer Allen Ginsberg's saying that poetry is everywhere." Urie manages to turn these intimate statements into sympathetic, playful and cleverly orchestrated pieces, but does ...
read moreNicholas Urie Large Ensemble: Excerpts From an Online Dating Service
by C. Michael Bailey
Youthfully precocious composer/conductor Nicholas Urie was born in Los Angeles in 1985. He began winning jazz composition awards when he was 17 years old and studied composition with Bob Brookmeyer, then graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music with a master's degree.
This résumé establishes Urie as a wunderkind and this designation manifests on his big band event Excerpts From an Online Dating Service(Red Piano, 2009). Excerpts is a suite composed around actual online dating site postings. Utterly adult ...
read moreNicholas Urie's "My Garden:" Composer's Big Band Music Based on Charles Bukowski
Source:
Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards
Without a great deal of build up and/or suspense I'll say right off the bat that I like what Nicholas Urie is up to on My Garden (Red Piano Records [RPR] 14599-4405-2). It's very modern big-band music, well played, with the moderately acerbic and melancholic poetry of Charles Bukowski as the unifying theme. Christine Correa handles the vocals. She's pretty much perfect for the texts. Sometimes I am reminded of the Steve Lacy-Irene Aebi collaborations in terms of the jagged ...
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Nicholas Urie Celebrates "Excerpts from an Online Dating Service" on Wed., Nov. 4 at the Brooklyn Lyceum
Source:
Braithwaite & Katz Communications
Join composer Nicholas Urie in concert as he celebrates his highly acclaimed debut CD Excerpts from an Online Dating Service, in concert at 8:00 and 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 4 at the Brooklyn Lyceum, 227 4th Avenue, Brooklyn. Joining Urie are on winds: Jeremy Udden, Aaron Kriziki, Kenny Pexton, Noah Preminger, and Brian Landrus; on Trumpets: Kevin Bryan, Tba., Dave Smith, John Carlson Bones: Lolly Bienenfeld, Randy Pingrey, Matt Plummer Tuba: Mike Christianson; Christine Correa on voice and rhythm ...
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