Born in Los Angeles, California in 1985, Nicholas Urie was a recipient of the first annual ASCAP Young Jazz Composer’s Award at the age of 17. He left Los Angeles to study composition with Bob Brookmeyer in Boston, receiving both bachelors and masters degrees from the New England Conservatory of Music. Urie’s music has been heard internationally at festivals and concerts throughout Europe and North America.

As an active arranger and composer Urie has been commissioned to write music for concerts, recordings, and television broadcasts. Performances, commissions and collaborations with: Kurt Elling, John Scofield, Donny McCaslin, Dave Samuels, Queen Latifah, Steve Vai, Cory Wong, Lucienne Renaudin Vary, James Oesi, The Spinners, The Black Keys, LOCASH, the Metropole Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra chamber concert series, the Boston Pops, The Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, The NHL Winter Classic, Skavlan TV, the Klüvers Big Band, the Scottish National Jazz Orchestra, A Far Cry Chamber Orchestra, and the Clazz Ensemble, among others. 

Urie’s recordings of original music, Excerpts from an Online Dating Service (2009), My Garden (2012), Quintet (2019), and Two Songs (2023) earned wide critical acclaim. "All About Jazz" praised Urie's sui generis saying, “Urie does not simply blow off the dust of the large jazz ensemble, he sandblasts it off with Uranium.” At the same time, Urie’s unique ability to transform unlikely source material through subtle musical treatment has been widely noted. “Downbeat” magazine observed that, “Urie succeeds wonderfully in transferring the grime of skid row to the sheen of the concert hall without sacrificing any of the bite and desperate humanity.” 

Urie is an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA where he teaches jazz composition and music theory.