Nick Olynciw brings live piano — and a voice to go with it — to hotels, restaurants, private clubs, and communities across Chicago. The Great American Songbook through jazz, soul, and standards people didn't know they remembered. Warm, unhurried, and tuned to the evening you're trying to create.
Start the conversation →Background piano isn't background when it's right. It's the reason people stay for another round. A few things a room gets when Nick is at the piano:
Gershwin to Motown, Nat Cole to Carole King, bossa nova to the blues — chosen in the moment for the crowd that's actually there, not the one on a set list.
A pianist who sings changes what a solo booking can be. Instrumental elegance at dinner, a sung set when the room leans in — without booking a duo.
Your grand gets played the way it deserves — or Nick brings a stage piano that sounds like one. Quiet setup, tasteful volume, no drama.
W-9, invoice, certificate of insurance on request. On time, dressed for the room, gracious with guests. The easiest vendor on your list.
Beyond the cocktail hour, Nick performs themed concert programs — fifty minutes of music and the stories behind it — for senior living communities, private clubs, libraries, and cultural series across Chicagoland. Each pairs live performance with the history of the songs, and each comes with printed programs and a one-sheet for your calendar.
Louis Armstrong cut the Hot Seven in downtown Chicago in 1927. Nat King Cole learned his trade at DuSable High. The story of how jazz became Chicago's music — told from the piano.
Sinatra at Capitol, Ella's Song Books, Nat Cole in velvet — the decade the Songbook was recorded the way we remember it, performed live.
How a blues pianist's grief gave the world gospel music — from a performer with a working background in sacred music and the Hammond organ.
"White Christmas" to "Silver Bells" — the American holiday songbook, and the remarkable writers behind it, in one warm December hour.
Programs run 50 minutes plus a meet-and-greet, work in a 200-seat auditorium or a 20-resident lounge, and can be booked individually or as a season. Additional programs available — ask for the full catalog.
Nick Olynciw is a jazz pianist and vocalist based in Chicago's West Town. He studied jazz piano at the University of North Texas and Western Michigan University, and has spent the decade since at the piano professionally — hotel rooms and supper clubs, jazz clubs and concert stages, more than a hundred and fifty weddings, and the occasional Sunday at the organ.
He's held residencies at the Coq d'Or at The Drake Hotel and The Berghoff, played Andy's Jazz Club, and spent summers at the piano of the Iroquois Hotel on Mackinac Island. What those rooms have in common: nobody hands you a set list. You listen, and you play the evening the room is asking for.
He also runs a small teaching studio — because the best thing about knowing how this music works is handing it to someone else.
A standing night, a concert program, a season, or one perfect evening — tell Nick about the room and the audience, and he'll come back with the right shape for it.
Email Nick → nick@musicwithnick.com · Chicago, IL