Biography
Nick Semenykhin is an up-and-coming jazz guitarist, composer, arranger and audio engineer who is starting to build his name among the scene of New York City and Montreal. He’s actively performing with some of the finest musicians as well as leading his own groups.
Nick was born and raised in Ukraine. He intertwined his life with music early on by starting singing and playing classical piano when he was 4. At the age of 13, Nick started taking classical guitar lessons, switching to electric when he was 17. While Rock was the main inspiration for Nick to start pursuing electric guitar the Wes Montgomery’s record “Bumpin’” introduced to Nick by his first electric guitar teacher made jazz his main passion. Nick then briefly attended the Donetsk’s and Kharkiv’s Conservatories. While there he has performed at many notable performance spaces in Ukraine, such as Donetsk Philarmonic, Kharkiv National Center Of Arts, Kiev’s International Center of Culture among many others.
Read full biography ↓
During this time Nick was continuing developing his skills under the supervision of Andreas Oberg who then later suggested that Nick should try to get in in one of the music schools in the US to continue mastering his craft. He did just that, moving to New York in 2015 and getting admitted to The New School receiving a full scholarship. Nick graduated from The New School with Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts with honors in May 2019.
In New York, he has had the opportunity to be mentored by, and play with remarkable artists like Vic Juris, Peter Bernstein, Hal Galper, David Glasser, Victor Jones, Kim Clarke, Michel Donato, Adam Klipple, Ed Cherry, Jonathan Kreisberg, Aaron Goldberg, Buster Williams, Richard Boukas and others.
He also had a chance to perform at some of the finest venues in NYC and in the US leading his own band or/and being a sideman: Minton’s Playhouse, Bar 55, Bar Next Door, Zinc Bar, Twins Jazz Club (Washington D.C.), Nighttown (Cleveland, OH), Pintagon (Kharkiv, Ukraine) and many others. Nick has also performed with Hattie Simon’s Group at the Bern Jazz Festival in 2018.
Nick has released an EP entitled “Peacocks” with Hattie Simon, Itamar Shapiro and Gabriel Seymore in August 2019, a demo recording with a group “Monkbread” (with Vinicius Cajado and Caleb Cronan) in December 2019 and has released an EP called “Set Sail” with Solane Sancho featuring Michel Donato in February, 2020.
Currently, Nick is based in Montréal and working on his Master's Degree at McGill’s Schulich School of Music as well as participating in the local scene.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.