Excerpts of recent work:

My Garden: (2010)
concert length Bukowski song cycle for the City Band, New York, USA .

Voluntas in Exemplum - or: How I Learned To Love The Grid (2009)
For the Clazz Ensemble, Amsterdam, Netherlands. (listen)

A Piece (2009)
For the Large Ensemble, New York.

Slaughterhouse (2009)
For the Metropole Orchestra, Amsterdam, Netherlands. (listen)

Black Mountain Education (2007) (Listen)
For Dave Samuels and the Berklee College of Music Chamber Orchestra, Boston, Ma.

Excerpts From An Online Dating Service (2005 -08)
For the NU Large Ensemble record, ‘Excerpts From An Online Dating Service’

This 55’ work surveys the current cultural landscape of Internet ‘Casual Encounters’ postings with ample amounts of irony and heartbreak at its core. The work takes an opening shot at investigating a new medium of personal expression, which in some cases fuses a kind of poetry and confessional prose into a highly personal summation of an individual’s needs, fears, desires, and hopes.

EM: 1 & 2  (2007)
For the Möbius Chamber Orchestra and Kenny Pexton (solo tenor and soprano saxophones) (listen)

Excerpts of recent work:

Every Time We Say Goodbye (2010) Dominique Eade (listen)
A Far Cry chamber orchestra, Boston

Declaration (2009) Donny McCaslin (listen)
Klüvers Big Band, Denmark

A La Orilla (2009) John McNiel
Small Big Band

Teen Drama (2009) The Makers (listen)
Chamber Orchestra and Rock Band, appearing on Good Girl Hank.

Los Angeles (2008) Mehldau
Chamber Orchestra and Jazz Piano Trio

For No One (2008) McCartney & Lennon
Harp and Mezzo Soprano

Death on Pluto (2007) Michael Calabrese
For Lake Street Dive and ‘Friends’ Boston, MA.

Hallelujah (2007) Leonard Cohen (listen)
For Bob Brookmeyer and the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra Boston, MA.

Skating in Central Park (2007) John Lewis (listen)
For the Möbius Chamber Orchestra and Kenny Pexton, solo Clarinet, Boston, MA.

Sultani Yaka (2007)  traditional Syrian Folk Song
For the Syrian Jazz Festival Big Band, Damascus, Syria.

Delta Sierra (2006)
For Dave Samuels and the Ximo Tebar Jazz Orchestra, Granada, Spain.

One Step Ahead (2006)
For Dave Samuels and the Ximo Tebar Jazz Orchestra, Granada, Spain.

NU LARGE ENSEMBLE: The Nicholas Urie Large Ensemble is a cast of unique characters based in New York City. The NU Large Ensemble is dedicated to playing the music of our time by addressing the world through a diverse collection of settings based on texts from past and present. Inspiration is harvested from “found” as well as poetic writing, the only criterion is that the text must capture the earnestly ironic joys and sorrows of life. The ensemble performs settings of: Robert Creeley, Charles Bukowski, Internet sex adds, the Tao Te Ching, Shirley Temple, Ambrose Bierce, and of course - Freud. The seventeen members of the ensemble consist of some of the most interesting performers in NYC. The Ensemble’s new record “Excerpts From an Online Dating Service” (Red Piano Records) prominently features: Christine Correa (who has sung with Ran Blake and Steve Lacy), Chris Speed (Jim Black and Kurt Rosenwinkle), Bill McHenry (Paul Motian, John McNeil), Frank Carlberg (Kenny Wheeler, Steve Lacy, Bob Brookmeyer), John Carlson (Julius Hemphill, Sam Rivers, Tito Puente), and Joe Martin (Kurt Rosenwinkle and Mark Turner).

The Carlberg/Urie City Band is dedicated to playing the music of Nicholas Urie and Frank Carlberg.

Originally a native of Helsinki, Finland, Frank Carlberg has carved himself quite a niche in the New York jazz community. As a leader, Frank’s groups include the Frank Carlberg Quintet (performing settings of a wide variety of texts including poems by poets), the Tivoli Trio (a classic jazz piano trio playing an eclectic mix of Carlberg’s compositions drawn from cinematic and circus inspirations) and the Frank Carlberg Big Band (performing original compositions as well as arrangements and re-compositions of standards and folk materials).

His own bands aside, the Brooklyn-based pianist has been involved in many crossover projects throughout the years. Some of his most notable collaborations have included performances and recordings with the likes of saxophonist Steve Lacy, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and trumpeter Kenny Wheeler. He has been commissioned to write music for big bands, small ensembles, symphony orchestras as well as modern dance companies.

Nicholas Urie’s music has been heard internationally at festivals and concerts in Peru, Syria, Spain, England, Germany, Holland, Denmark and the United States. Nicholas’ music has been performed by: Bob Brookmeyer, Vince Mendoza, the Metropole Orchestra, the Turtle Island String Quartet, the Clazz Ensemble, the NDR, the Klüvers Big Band, A Far Cry chamber orchestra, Ximo Tebar/Granada Jazz Festival Big Band and the Berklee Chamber Orchestra, among others. Nicholas also composes for his own large Jazz Ensemble whose first record Excerpts From an Online Dating Service garnered critical acclaim from the international press.

“[Urie's] résumé establishes him as a wunderkind and this designation manifests on his big band event Excerpts From an Online Dating Service Excerpts is very well conceived. Jazz (or any genre, for that matter) has never seen such adaptation. Writing music to surround such difficult text is a feather in Urie’s cap. Making it so immediately accessible and entertaining is a mark of the young composer’s genius. Big band music has never veered so far from its swing roots as it does on this recording. Urie does not simply blow off the dust of the large jazz ensemble, he sandblasts it off with Uranium.“

– C. Michael Bailey, All About Jazz

Some bands I have written for in the last year:

Metropole Orchestra, Netherlands

Kluvers Big Band, Denmark

Clazz Ensemble, Netherlands

NDR, Germany

John McNeil Concert Jazz Orchestra, New York

A Far Cry chamber orchestra, Boston

The impetus for beginning work on Excerpts From an Online Dating Service was a TV special I saw in 2005 called “Marriages Gone Bad: is Your Spouse Cruising From Home?” or something equally sensational.  At that time I had no idea how pervasive Internet dating/cyber sexual communities were and I really wanted to know more. Now, I’ve always been interested in the underlying meaning of how we as humans interact. Strange little quirks I see on the train going back and forth on my daily commute always catch my attention. I find discovering things like while dining, if you are exposed to television(s) you eat faster and drink more booze and why women buy cars with more than five cup holders over cars with fewer cup management possibilities really exciting. So, this little ten-minute special sent me off on a project that I have been working on – on and off – for three years.

There are a few things that become immediately apparent when you scroll through your first batch of M4W, MW4W, T4M ads. One is, you have no idea what the hell all these three-to-sometimes-ten letter abbreviations mean. After three years I’m still in the dark about how to decipher this insiders code. Another striking aspect of these ads is the instantaneous openness and vulnerability within the medium. This heightened level of frankness is unnerving and completely unthinkable in a non-cyber environment. The third and possibly most pervasive social trait within this Internet subculture is the fluidity of persona and detachment from personal responsibility.

What initially piqued my interest was the amazing level of vulnerability people are willing to show on the Internet, as well as the level of immediate intimacy that develops between people who have never met and may have only communicated a handful of times via e-mail. Divorce, kids, fetishes, dress sizes, issues surrounding religion and faith, earnest searching for love (or at least a good substitute for the night or afternoon), overwhelming loneliness, joy, and plain all-out lust can all be found on any “Casual Encounters” web site. Virtually any topic is freed from the Taboo allowing the community to interact without self-censorship or traditional social filtering. It is unfettered human experience, something we rarely witness outside our own minds conveniently rolled into a few sentences and put in front of an anonymous and captive audience.

Mostly dull and poorly written, these descriptions are not very good advertisements if you were, say, advertising a lawn mower or a new shampoo. But a good many are remarkably personal and sometimes startlingly creative, and some of these make up the core of texts that have become Excerpts. Creativity goes a long way in such a mass of people looking to connect. You want to pop. You want to be fabulous. What can one really say about themselves in a paragraph or two? We as people are too complicated to get into the specifics of ourselves right away, but showing someone your take on life in an individual way is as good a start as any. Sharing maladies seems to be another way people connect. “My wife is a bitch.” “My husband can’t get it up.” Trivial and easily solved issues (Therapy, Viagra, divorce etc.) - frankly boring issues in non-internet life - become as enormous and as glamorous as Hollywood.

Another aspect and maybe the most immediately recognizable and interesting trait of connecting via the Internet is the possibility of personal reinvention. You can be whomever you want. You can walk away at anytime to explore another persona. When you meet someone in a hotel room you can simply say when questioned as to your real identity, “Oh, my driver took the Bentley home” as your rusted Dodge sits quietly and unassumingly in the parking lot, all the while imagining your small basement studio apartment complete with dripping pipes, hotplate and communal bathroom. This is the real life manifestation of a Technicolor Wizard of Oz, this time in HD.

On the Internet people are free to say whatever they please without the fear of social scrutiny, rejection or embarrassment. Anything goes when there is no one checking facts. Most people on the Internet, or at least in this subculture, seem to be the folks we normal-looking people long to be while we self-obsessively pinch the doughnut that has made its home just above the hips on our 5’7.75” pasty frame: 6’3”, toned and muscular, a smile like George Clooney, like a bronzed god etc.

All of the texts in Excerpts From an Online Dating Service are unchanged, with the occasional exception of a little word repetition here and there. Each one is an artifact that highlights some aspect of this amazingly specific and highly stylized Internet subculture. The texts have been gathered from cities all over the United States and Canada and sometimes bare regional bits of language and content. Robo Girls Seeks Titanium Clad Male for example comes from the computer mecca Semi Valley. I find the ads in the song cycle to be beautifully written. I find them all to be somehow intended for an audience larger than the author might have imagined. These ads speak to the human condition and somehow are able to stir feelings we can all relate to.

For example, Afternoon? explores the kind of pull a mother experiences between caring for her kids and fulfilling her needs. She is taking a calculated risk and doesn’t hesitate to let everyone reading the ad know it. She says in relation to what must be her ex or soon to be ex-husband, “discresion [sic] is a must. I love my kids to much to have the corts [sic] give them to him.” She opens the ad with a summation of her emotional state: “I feel alone with my family and my church. I need someone special who can make me feel alive even if just for an afternoon.” Holidaze [sic] looks into one woman’s battle with loneliness on Christmas. She says, “My funds are low - that’s nothing new. How much could it cost to hook up with you? … No gift-wrap needed, that’s for sure. Why can’t there be one day I have some joy?”

The Internet personals ad just might be a new poetic medium. You will hear in the songs how carefully some people piece these advertisements together, consciously poring over word choice; sometimes, a writer inadvertently creates large-scale internal rhyme patterns that spin out over the course of the text. Those people who take their time writing an ad really manage to say something about who they are and how they see life. They give the world something special.

You can hear tracks from Bad Girl? (Excerpts From an Online Dating Service) in the music section of this website or at http://www.myspace.com/nicholasurielargeensemble

About Me: (click to hear sample)

I’m thirty
6′3″
Blond hair
Blue eyes
In a band - I’m a singer

I hope to her from you very soon. I want to meet you and have sex.
Are you stressed, achy, sore? Maybe more? Abusive ex? I’m just here for sex
And yes I have a picture you might like,
In it I’m banging my ex-wife.
So fuck her.

 

Holidaze [sic](click to hear sample)

I’ve got the tree up
The lights are all strung
I’m in the mood for some
Christmas time fun
Santa might show
I’m not really sure
I’ve certainly been a naughty girl

My funds are low
That’s nothing new
How much could it cost
To hook up with you?

No gift-wrap needed
That is for sure
Why can’t there be one day
I have some joy?

Santa might show
I’m not really sure
Christmas is such
A lonely day.

 

Bad Girl?

If you have been a bad girl
Misbehaving or bratting

I can supply you with relief
Corrections that you need.

I am a forty-two year old
Good looking and sexy.

I am familiar with the forms
Of female discipline.

I am here to give you that and more
So email me and ask.

No sex involved
Just good ol’ fashioned discipline,
Good ol’ fashioned spanking fun
With me.

 

Interlude #1

(tired of all the tedium in bed?)

The repetitiveness of
My sex life is almost
To much to bare. So,
If you have time
And would like to get some
We can meet and spice things up.

 

Wayne (click to hear sample)

(Ode to my babby[sic] mamma)

You’re like that first hit of crack
That first spike of smack
I crave your sweet love’n.
I have a passion for you
That burns hotter than any freebase
Spoon.
I wish I could blow you up my nose.

If I could just wax that ass
Just one more time, that’d be phat
I want you on my head
When I get out I’ll steal you all of the
bling that I want to give you.
When I get out I’m gunna fuck you
hard as you want
You are the bud and I am the bowl
You are like crack

So what I’m try’n to do
Is tell you that I love you
More than all those skank hoes
I’m getting out of this place
Soon as I do I’ll shoot it in your face
I’m gunna fuck you hard as I want to.

Interlude #2
(Aspiring Robo-Girl Seeks Titanium Clad Male)

Does anybody want
To pretend that they’re
A robot?

Send me a picture
Of you doing
Something robotic.

Five foot
Three inch
Made of sexy
Nuts and bolts
Seeking titanium-clad
male.

 

Cougar Seeks Prey (click to hear sample)

Forty-five year old woman
Out on the prowl for prey
Looking for three hot young guys
To play with real soon.

I run a class from my home
That caters to young men
We’ll cover all of the basics
Of your sexual game.

You will do all that your teacher
wants you to
including but not limited to:
oral, anal, submission play
and of coarse anything you choose.

My husband will be attending
But he won’t join the fray.

 

Afternoon?

I feel alone
With my family
And my church
I need someone
Someone special
Who can make me
feel alive
Even if just for an
afternoon.

Discretion is a must
I love my kids too much
To have the courts give them
To him.

Don’t write to me with your Jesus shit
I’ve spent my whole life having that
Crap laid on me by people
Who don’t practice what the preach in church

Blond hair blue eyes
Look good for my age and I’m
Waiting for your reply.
Just send a Pic and we’ll see
If we click enough to make
This dream of mine
Come true.