- jazz violinist, saxophonist, music composer and arranger. In 1973 he left Poland for New York. He gained fame appearing on the LP Tutu with the jazz legend Miles Davis. He has invited or been invited himself to play with such international jazz celebrities as Quincy Jones, Billy Cobham, Stéphane Grappelli, Joe Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Kenny Garrett, George Benson, Marcus Miller, Jaco Pastorius, Toots Thielemans, Kenny Kirkland, Larry Coryell, Lenny White, and Alphonse Mouzon.
Urbaniak is the leader, composer and arranger of such original music projects as Jazz Legends, Fusion, Urbanator, Urbanizer, and UrbSymphony. At the 1971 Festival de Jazz de Montreux he won the Grand Prix for the best soloist (1971). He has performed at the world’s most important jazz festivals, such as Newport Jazz, JVC, Chicago Jazz, Lugano, and Den Haag, as well as giving performances in Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, and famous jazz clubs in New York and worldwide, including Blue Note, Village Vanguard, and Sweet Basil. He is also the world’s first inventor-violinist to have performed on the five-string violin built after his own design.
Associated for many years with the film and theatre industries, he has authored music for such films as Astonished, As the Band Played On, Dreambird (in the USA) as well as M. Treliński’s Farewell to Autumn, W. Szarek’s Spona, K. Krauze’s The Debt and the series Big Deals (in Poland). Urbaniak has more than 60 original releases to his name. In 2016 he won Poland’s most important music industry prize – the Golden Fryderyk, awarded by the Polish Phonographic Academy for all his contributions in the field of music.