Michał Urbaniak is a Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 jazz

Polish jazz

-Polish jazz before Communism:The beginning of jazz in Poland is difficult to determine. Still by the 1930s clubs in Warsaw, Kraków, Rzeszów or Poznań would play some jazz. This tended to be swing and some of it was influenced by more classical influences like George Gershwin. Eddie Rosner might...

 musician and composer born in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

, playing mainly the violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

, lyricon

Lyricon

The Lyricon is an electronic wind instrument, the first wind controller to be constructed.Invented by Bill Bernardi , it was manufactured by a company called Computone Inc in Massachusetts...

 and saxophone

Saxophone

The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

 during concerts and recordings. He played a central role in the development of jazz fusion

Jazz fusion

Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...

 in the 1970s and 1980s, and has introduced elements of folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

, R&B, hip hop

Hip hop music

Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...

, and symphonic music to jazz.

Biography

Urbaniak started his music education during high school in Łódź, and continued from 1961 in Warsaw in the violin class of Tadeusz Wroński. Learning to play on the saxophone alone, he first played in a Dixieland band, and later with Zbigniew Namysłowski and the "Jazz Rockers", with whom he performed during the Jazz Jamboree

Jazz Jamboree

Jazz Jamboree Festival, one of the biggest and oldest jazz festivals in Europe, takes place in Warsaw. Organized by .-History:The first Jazz Jamboree was organised by Hot-Club Hybrydy. It was three days long and it was called "Jazz 58". The first three editions of the festival took place in the...

 festival in 1961. After this, he was invited to play with Andrzej Trzaskowski

Andrzej Trzaskowski

Andrzej Trzaskowski was an eminent Polish composer and jazz musician who, between 1959 and 1990, composed the music and/or conducted the score for some thirty films....

, and toured the USA

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 in 1962 with his band "The Wreckers", playing at festivals and clubs in Newport

Newport, Rhode Island

Newport is a city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States, about south of Providence. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War...

, San Francisco

San Francisco, California

San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

, Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Washington

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, and New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

After returning to Poland, he engaged on work with Krzysztof Komeda

Krzysztof Komeda

Krzysztof Komeda was a Polish film music composer and jazz pianist. Perhaps best-known for his work in film scores, Komeda wrote the scores for Roman Polanski’s films Rosemary’s Baby, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Knife in the Water and Cul-de-sac...

's quintet (1962–1964). Together, they left for Scandinavia, where, after finishing a couple of contracts, Urbaniak remained until 1969. There he created a band with Urszula Dudziak

Urszula Dudziak

Urszula Bogumiła Dudziak-Urbaniak is a leading Polish jazz vocalist. She has worked with such artists as Krzysztof Komeda, Michał Urbaniak , Gil Evans, Archie Shepp, and Lester Bowie...

 and Wojciech Karolak

Wojciech Karolak

Wojciech Karolak is a notable Hammond B-3 organ player who refers to himself as "an American jazz and rhythm and blues musician, born by mistake in Middle Europe". He has also played saxophone and piano professionally.In 1958, he started working with the band the 'Jazz Believers' playing alto...

, which gained considerable success and was later to be the starting point for the famous "Michał Urbaniak Fusion".

After Urbaniak returned to Poland and the violin (which he abandoned for the saxophone during the time in Scandinavia), he created the self-named "Michał Urbaniak Group", to which he invited, among others, Adam Makowicz

Adam Makowicz

Adam Makowicz born Adam Matyszkowicz is a Polish-Canadian pianist and composer living in Toronto. He performs jazz and classical piano pieces, as well as his own compositions...

 (piano) and Urszula Dudziak (vocals). They recorded their first international album, Parathyphus B, and played on many festivals, including Jazz Jamboree in 1969–1972. During the Montreux'71 festival, Urbaniak was awarded "Grand Prix" for the best soloist and scholarship by the prestigious Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music

Berklee College of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world. Known primarily as a school for jazz, rock and popular music, it also offers college-level courses in a wide range of contemporary and historic styles, including hip...

 in Boston. After many triumphant concerts in Europe and the USA, in May 1973 he played for the last time before a Polish audience and emigrated with Urszula Dudziak on September 11, 1973, to the United States, where he now lives as US citizen.

In spite of getting an award from Berklee, he did not study there. Recommended by John H. Hammond

John H. Hammond

John Henry Hammond II was an American record producer, musician and music critic from the 1930s to the early 1980s...

, Urbaniak signed a contract with Columbia Records

Columbia Records

Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...

, who published the west-German album Super Constellation under the name Fusion. For the promotion tour, he invited Polish musicians, including Czesław Bartkowski, Paweł Jarzębski, and Wojciech Karolak

Wojciech Karolak

Wojciech Karolak is a notable Hammond B-3 organ player who refers to himself as "an American jazz and rhythm and blues musician, born by mistake in Middle Europe". He has also played saxophone and piano professionally.In 1958, he started working with the band the 'Jazz Believers' playing alto...

. In 1974, Urbaniak formed the band Fusion, and introduced melodic and rhythmic elements of Polish folk music into his funky New York based music. Urbaniak followed his musical journey with very innovative projects like: Urbanator ( first band fusing rap & hip-hop in jazz), "Urbanizer" (project with his band and 4 piece R&B vocal group - 1978) and UrbSymphony, (where on Jan. 27th 1995 jazz group with rapper and Apple computer played concert and recorded cd & dvd with 60 piece full symphony orchestra)

Since 1970 Urbaniak is playing on a custom-made, five string violin furnished especially for him, violin synthesizer called "talkin'" violin, soprano, alto and tenor saxophones and on lyricon (electric sax-like horn). His fusion with a hint of folklore was becoming popular among the leaders of American jazz, and also provided opportunity for many new musicians (Harold Williams

Harold Williams

Harold Williams, M.Sc, Ph.D, FRSC was one of the premier field geologists in the history of geology and the foremost expert on the Appalachian Mountains of North America...

, Steve Jordan

Steve Jordan (musician)

Steve Jordan is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, musical director and Grammy Award-winning artist, who has made a name for himself as a producer from the Bronx in New York City. A graduate of the Fiorello H...

, Marcus Miller

Marcus Miller

Marcus Miller is an American jazz composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Miller is best known as a bassist, working with trumpeter Miles Davis, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn, as well as maintaining a prolific solo career...

, Kenny Kirkland

Kenny Kirkland

Kenneth David “Kenny” Kirkland was an American pianist/keyboardist. He is most often associated with Sting, Branford Marsalis, Wynton Marsalis, and Kenny Garrett....

, Tony Bunn

Tony Bunn

Robert Anthony Bunn, also known as Tony Bunn, is an American bassist, composer, producer, and writer.His instruments are bass guitar, upright bass, voice, and mind. His styles are jazz, funk, blues, and rock.-Biography :...

, Omar Hakim, and Victor Bailey. He started to play in well known clubs such as Village Vanguard and Village Gate, in famous concert halls such as Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

, Beacon Theatre, and Avery Fisher Hall

Avery Fisher Hall

Avery Fisher Hall is a concert hall, in New York City and is part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex. It is the home of the New York Philharmonic, with a capacity of 2,738 seats.-History:...

. In this period he played with such stars as Weather Report

Weather Report

Weather Report was an American jazz-rock band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul and the American saxophonist Wayne Shorter...

, Freddie Hubbard

Freddie Hubbard

Frederick Dewayne "Freddie" Hubbard was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known primarily for playing in the bebop, hard bop and post bop styles from the early 1960s and on...

, Elvin Jones

Elvin Jones

Elvin Ray Jones was a jazz drummer of the post-bop era. He showed interest in drums at a young age, watching the circus bands march by his family's home in Pontiac, Michigan....

, Herbie Hancock

Herbie Hancock

Herbert Jeffrey "Herbie" Hancock is an American pianist, bandleader and composer. As part of Miles Davis's "second great quintet," Hancock helped to redefine the role of a jazz rhythm section and was one of the primary architects of the "post-bop" sound...

, Chick Corea

Chick Corea

Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist, and composer.Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards. As a member of Miles Davis' band in the 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever...

, George Benson

George Benson

George Benson is a ten Grammy Award winning American musician, whose production career began at the age of twenty-one as a jazz guitarist....

, and Billy Cobham

Billy Cobham

William C. Cobham is a Panamanian American jazz drummer, composer and bandleader, who has called Switzerland home since the late 1970s....

.

Urbaniak has invited and has been invited by many other well known jazz stars, including Lenny White

Lenny White

Leonard White III, better known as Lenny White is an American jazz fusion drummer, who is best known for playing in Chick Corea's Return to Forever.-Biography:...

, Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter

Wayne Shorter is an American jazz saxophonist and composer.He is generally acknowledged to be jazz's greatest living composer, and many of his compositions have become standards...

, Marcus Miller

Marcus Miller

Marcus Miller is an American jazz composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Miller is best known as a bassist, working with trumpeter Miles Davis, singer Luther Vandross, and saxophonist David Sanborn, as well as maintaining a prolific solo career...

, Joe Zawinul

Joe Zawinul

Josef Erich Zawinul was an Austrian-American jazz keyboardist and composer.First coming to prominence with saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, Zawinul went on to play with trumpeter Miles Davis, and to become one of the creators of jazz fusion, an innovative musical genre that combined jazz with...

, Ron Carter

Ron Carter

Ron Carter is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that...

, Kenny Barron

Kenny Barron

Kenny Barron , is an American jazz pianist. He is the younger brother of tenor saxophonist Bill Barron, and known for his lyrical, adaptive style.-Biography:...

, Buster Williams

Buster Williams

Charles Anthony Williams is an American jazz bassist.-Biography:Williams has gained prestige among jazz musicians as a solid supportive player. Since the early 1960s, he has made subtle swing, a precise rhythm and superb technique the landmark of his playing...

 and Quincy Jones

Quincy Jones

Quincy Delightt Jones, Jr. is an American record producer and musician. A conductor, musical arranger, film composer, television producer, and trumpeter. His career spans five decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, 27 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend...

. In 1985, he was invited to play during the recording of Tutu with the father of fusion, Miles Davis

Miles Davis

Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz musician, trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Widely considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, Miles Davis was, with his musical groups, at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including bebop, cool jazz,...

. Davis is reported to have said on this occasion: "Get me this fucking Polish fiddler, he's got the sound!"

Discography

• Paratyphus B (1970)
• Inactin (1971)
• New Violin Summit (with Don "Sugarcane" Harris, Jean-Luc Ponty
  Jean-Luc Ponty
  Jean-Luc Ponty is a French virtuoso violinist and jazz composer.- Early years:Ponty was born into a family of classical musicians on 29 September 1942 in Avranches, France. His father taught violin, his mother taught piano...
  
  , Nipso Brantner, Terje Rypdal
  Terje Rypdal
  Terje Rypdal is a Norwegian guitarist and composer. Most of his music has been released on albums of the German record label ECM. Rypdal has collaborated both as a guitarist and as a composer with other ECM artists such as Ketil Bjørnstad and David Darling...
  
  , Wolfgang Dauner
  Wolfgang Dauner
  Wolfgang Dauner is a German jazz fusion pianist, composer and keyboardist born in Stuttgart, Germany, probably best known for his work in the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble and with musicians such as Hans Koller, Albert Mangelsdorff, Volker Kriegel or Ack van Rooyen...
  
  , Neville Whitehead
  Neville Whitehead (bassist)
  Neville Whitehead is a New Zealand bassist and luthier who was an active member of the British jazz fusion community in the 1970s.Whitehead played at times in Keith Tippett's sextet in the late 1960s, including alongside Elton Dean. He appears on The Keith Tippett Group's Dedicated To You, But You...
  
  , Robert Wyatt
  Robert Wyatt
  Robert Wyatt is an English musician, and founding member of the influential Canterbury scene band Soft Machine, with a long and distinguished solo career...
  
  ) (1972)
• Super Constellation (and Constellation In Concert) (1973)
• Polish Jazz (1973)
• Atma (1974)
• Fusion (1974)
• Funk Factory (1975)
• Fusion III (1975)
• Body English (1976)
• Urbaniak (1977)
• Ecstasy (1978)
• Music For Violin And Jazz Quartet (1980)
• Serenade for The City (1980)
• New York Five at the Village Vanguard (1989)
• Songs For Poland (1989)
• Milky Way, Some Other Blues, Mardin (1990)
• Cinemode (1990)
• Songbird (1991)
• Burning Circuits, Urban Express, Manhattan Man (1992)
• Urbanator (1993)
• Code Blue (1996)
• Urbanator II (1996)
• Urbaniax (1998)
• Ask Me Now (1999)
• Fusion (1999)
• Sax, Love & Cinema (2001)
• I Jazz Love You (2004)
• Urbanator III (2005)
• Jazz Legends" No. 1 (2006
• Jazz Legends" No. 2 (2007)
• Jazz Legends" No. 3 (2008)
• Jazz Legends" Box (all 3 records-2008)
• Miles Of Blue" - 2CD (2009)

External links

• Michał Urbaniak on 4web
• Michał Urbaniak Jazz Portal
• http://www.urbanator.com
• http://www.urbanizer.com
• http://www.urbsymphony.com
• http://www.urbanatordays.com
• http://www.fornewyork.us