Jazz Articles about Nicholas Urie

Nicholas Urie: My Garden

by C. Michael Bailey
April 27, 2011

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 ...

Nicholas Urie: My Garden

by Matt Marshall
March 27, 2011

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, ...

Nicholas Urie: My Garden

by Wilbert Sostre
March 10, 2011

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 ...

Nicholas Urie: My Garden

by Mark Corroto
February 21, 2011

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. ...

Nicholas Urie: Excerpts From An Online Dating Service

by Eyal Hareuveni
January 15, 2010

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 ...

Nicholas Urie Large Ensemble: Excerpts from an Online Dating Service

by AAJ Italy Staff
July 21, 2009

Non manca certo il coraggio, a Nicholas Urie, giovane compositore (24 anni) di Los Angeles. Coraggiosa è infatti la scelta di realizzare il proprio album d'esordio con una big band. E coraggiosa è anche l'idea intorno a cui ruota questo progetto. Come indicato dal titolo, l'album mette in musica testi tratti da siti internet di annunci per incontri. Una autentica e variegata commedia umana, con tutto il suo carico di sentimenti, espressi e sottaciuti. Senza ironizzare e senza giudicare. Lo ...

Nicholas Urie Large Ensemble: Excerpts From an Online Dating Service

by C. Michael Bailey
May 15, 2009

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 ...