Michał Urbaniak

Life and career

Urbaniak was born in Warsaw, General Government on 22 January 1943. He started his music education during high school in Łódź, Poland, and continued from 1961 in Warsaw in the violin class of Tadeusz Wroński. Learning to play on the alto 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 festival in 1961. After this, he was invited to play with Andrzej Trzaskowski, and toured the United States in 1962 with the Andrzej Trzaskowski band, the Wreckers, playing at festivals and clubs in Newport, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York City.

After returning to Poland, he worked with Krzysztof Komeda'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 and Wojciech Karolak, which gained considerable success and was later to be the starting point for Michał Urbaniak Fusion.

After Urbaniak returned to Poland again and the violin (which he abandoned for the saxophone during the time in Scandinavia), he created the Michał Urbaniak Group, to which he invited, among others, Urszula Dudziak (vocals), Adam Makowicz (piano), Pawel Jarzebski – bass, and Czeslaw Bartkowski – drums. They recorded their first international albums, Parathyphus B, Instinct and played in many festivals, including Jazz Jamboree in 1969–1972. During the Montreux 1971 festival, Urbaniak was awarded "Grand Prix" for the best soloist and received a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. After many triumphant concerts in Europe and the United States, in May 1973 he played for the last time before a Polish audience and emigrated with Urszula Dudziak on 11 September 1973, to the United States, where he lived as a U.S. citizen.