ELena urioste & tom poster
Elena Urioste is a musician, yogi, writer, and entrepreneur. As a violinist, Elena has given acclaimed solo performances with major orchestras throughout the world, including the Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Minnesota Orchestras; the New York and Los Angeles Philharmonics; the Chicago, Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, San Diego, National, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, among many others in the United States; the London Philharmonic, Hallé, Philharmonia, CBSO, Orchestra of Opera North, and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras; the BBC Symphony, Philharmonic, Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and National Orchestra of Wales; as well as the Chineke! Orchestra, Malaysian Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Lille, and Hungary’s Orchestra Dohnányi Budafok and MAV Orchestras. She has performed as a featured soloist in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium, the Concertgebouw, and the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall; and has given recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Kennedy Center, Konzerthaus Berlin, Sage Gateshead, Bayerischer Rudfunk Munich, and Mondavi Center. Elena is a former BBC New Generation Artist (2012-14) and has been featured on the covers of Strings, Symphony, and BBC Music magazines.
An avid chamber musician, Elena is the founder and Artistic Director of Chamber Music by the Sea, an annual festival on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. She has been a featured artist at the Marlboro, Ravinia, and La Jolla Music Festivals, as well as the Aldeburgh and Cheltenham Music Festivals, Open Chamber Music at Prussia Cove, and the Verbier Festival’s winter residency at Schloss Elmau. She is the co-director of the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, appointed Associate Ensemble at Wigmore Hall in 2020.
Elena is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School. She is the co-founder of Intermission, a program that combines music, movement, and mindfulness, and received her RYT-200 hour yoga teaching certification from the Kripalu Center in June 2019. The outstanding instruments being used by Elena are an Alessandro Gagliano violin, Naples c. 1706, and a Nicolas Kittel bow, both on a generous extended loan from the private collection of Dr. Charles E. King through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.
Tom Poster is a musician whose skills and passions extend well beyond the conventional role of the concert pianist. He has been described as “a marvel, [who] can play anything in any style” (The Herald), “mercurially brilliant” (The Strad), and as having “a beautiful tone that you can sink into like a pile of cushions” (BBC Music). During the 2020 lockdown, his #UriPosteJukebox series with Elena Urioste - featuring Tom as pianist, arranger, multi-instrumentalist, writer, curator, backing dancer and snowman - brought a staggeringly diverse selection of music to audiences across the world through 88 daily online performances, for which the duo won the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Inspiration Award.
Tom is co-founder and artistic director of Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Associate Ensemble at Wigmore Hall in 2020 with a flexible line-up featuring many of today’s most inspirational musicians, and an ardent commitment to diversity through its creative programming.
Tom has performed over forty concertos from Mozart to Ligeti. He has premiered solo, chamber, and concertante works by many leading composers, made multiple appearances at the BBC Proms, and his exceptional versatility has put him in great demand at festivals internationally.
He studied with Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and at King’s College, Cambridge. He won First Prize at the Scottish International Piano Competition 2007 and the keyboard section of the BBC Young Musician of the Year Competition in 2000.
Tom’s compositions and arrangements have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by Alison Balsom, Matthew Rose, Yo-Yo Ma, and Kathryn Stott. His chamber opera for puppets, The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak, received an acclaimed three-week run at Wilton’s Music Hall in 2017.