Nicholas Mycio is a Brooklyn-born, Los Angeles-based guitarist, composer and bandleader whose music draws from bebop, modern jazz guitar, electronic production and 20th-century concert harmony. Born in 1999 and raised in Sheepshead Bay, in Southern Brooklyn, Mycio started piano at two and guitar at four. His father, Wasil Mycio, is a guitarist and academic music theorist. 

Mycio entered Berklee College of Music in 2018 on a full-tuition scholarship and graduated in 2022; his teachers there included Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis and Nir Felder. During a 2019 study-abroad program in Spain, he booked dates in Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere in Europe, developing material for his 2021 debut album, Secrets From the Streetlights.

Released in 2024, NONSTANDARD set standards and familiar jazz repertoire against breakbeats and electronic textures. Written, performed and produced by Mycio, the album pushed the electronic side of his music further into view. “Jazz Guitar Today” observed that his music “perfectly blends the virtuosity found in jazz improvisation and the hard-hitting grime of electronic production.” 

On Please Plant Flowers, released in 2026, Mycio turned to the guitar trio. The album features Mycio on guitar and compositions, Sam McCarthy on drums and Kyle Colina on bass, and was recorded by Aleksi Godard at Heavens Not Enough Studios in Brooklyn, New York. Written during a period of war, displacement, illness and death in and around Mycio’s life, the music was not conceived as a concept album. He kept writing as events unfolded. Jacob Sylvester for “All About Jazz” would write “Mycios Please Plant Flowers is a remarkable achievement that transcends the boundaries of of traditional jazz” while Pete Prown for “Vintage Guitar Magazine” would say “Mycio is a player who improvises in a manner that will entrance and bewitch the listener”

Mycio’s playing reflects a lifelong immersion in bebop as well as an interest in concert composers including Alfred Schnittke and Paul Hindemith, whose harmonic writing shaped how he thinks about motion, tension and release. He has described his goal as playing “in the same manner in which he speaks.”

“Music isn’t just fun for me,” Mycio says. “It’s meaningful. It’s important. I care about being great — about looking back and knowing I did everything I could to reach my maximum potential as a musician.” 

Nicholas is endorsed by Luka Zaletelj, and Zaletelj Guitars.