Oskari Nurminen, the 2018 NYU Songwriting Scholar, is a songwriter, guitar player, and aspiring producer from Helsinki, Finland. His sound is deeply rooted in the classic and timeless melodies of singer-songwriters like James Taylor, but he also never shies away from exploring new musical frontiers through collaboration.
Raised in Munich, Germany, Oskari played guitar, drums, bass, and sang in bands throughout his teenage years. But it wasn't until a trip to Nashville, Tennessee, in 2010, that he fell in love with the craft of songwriting. He hasn't stopped pursuing that love since.
Oskari received a Bachelor of Arts in Musicology from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, in 2015. During his undergraduate career, he was also very fortunate to be able to spend a year as an exchange student at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music.
Oskari has worked in artist management for one of the biggest pop stars in his home country, overseen record releases as a product manager at a boutique indie label, and he had the opportunity to co-write two tracks for an album by Finnish 90s pop icon, Mika Ikonen. However, his hunger for knowledge drew him back to school, and in 2017, he started in NYU Steinhardt's unique graduate program in Songwriting.
Without a doubt, Oskari is eager to see what this new chapter has in store for him. Recently, he was a semi-finalist at the Unsigned Only music competition and a finalist in the best male artist category at the International Acoustic Music Awards. He continues to hone his craft one song at a time and he is looking forward to shaping the future of popular music, while constantly trying to share his knowledge with new generations of music creators.