Urbanator

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Urbanator is a jazz project of the Polish musician Michał Urbaniak, who played violin, lyricon and saxophone. Urbaniak was born in 1943 in Warsaw and in the 1960s played with, among others, Andrzej Trzaskowski and the quintet of Krzysztof Komeda. He performed at the Montreux festival, where in 1971 he won the Grand Prix for best soloist. In 1973 he emigrated with the singer Urszula Dudziak to the United States, where he signed to Columbia Records and with his band Fusion combined Polish folk music with funky jazz from New York.

Music and breakthrough

Innovative projects followed later. Urbanator is described as the first band to mix rap and hip hop with jazz. He also released Urbanizer, a project with a four-man R&B vocal group from 1978, and UrbSymphony. In 1995 UrbSymphony performed with a rapper and a symphony orchestra of sixty musicians, and that concert was recorded. The albums by Urbanator are Urbanator II (1996) and Urbanator (2022).

Influence

From 1970 Urbaniak played a five-string violin made especially for him, a violin synthesizer nicknamed the talking violin, alongside soprano, alto and tenor saxophone and lyricon, an electronic wind instrument that resembles a saxophone. He played with, among others, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul, and in 1985 Miles Davis invited him to the recording sessions for Tutu. He died in 2025. Urbanator shows that the boundary between jazz and hip hop was crossed early on.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1996Urbanator II
• 2022Urbanator II