Freya Parr
BBC Music’s editorial assistant
‘Leaving the house has been something of a novelty since March, so it was very special to meet Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, whose online concerts kept us all sane throughout the year.’
For newly married violinist-and-pianist duo Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, 2020 kicked off with a definite sense of optimism. The release of their second album together was imminent, and a honeymoon road trip around California would follow shortly after, with various concert appearances scheduled along the way. But then COVID-19 came along, and lockdown left them stuck on opposite sides of the globe – Poster on tour in India, Urioste in the US. ‘We realised that if I didn’t get to the States, we didn’t know when we would next see each other,’ explains Poster. ‘I got into the country about six hours before Trump closed the borders. Overnight, our diaries were obliterated. Everything we’d been looking forward to and excited about was gone.’
COUPLES LIKE Poster and Urioste were, however, the envy of musicians the world over: locked down with an equally accomplished performer for company. Poster has previously released several solo piano albums and recorded with trumpeter Alison Balsom, cellist Guy Johnston and violinist Jennifer Pike, while Urioste balances a solo career as a violinist on both sides of the Atlantic with Intermission, her series of holistic yoga and meditation workshops for musicians. From the very start of their relationship back in 2013, the pair have regularly performed and recorded together. But never quite as intensively as in 2020.
With no visits to the concert hall or studio in prospect, it was time for a rethink. ‘I was shocked at how many music organisations just threw up their hands and said, “everything’s cancelled”,’ says Urioste, the exasperation showing in her voice. ‘Everyone’s always bemoaning the fact that classical music struggles to reach certain listeners – to me, lockdown seemed like the perfect opportunity to cultivate new audiences.’
Their answer was #Uripostejukebox, 88 Youtube videos filmed daily in their flat in Philadelphia (and later at Urioste’s parents’ house in Maryland), performing their favourite music alongside listener requests – one video for each key of the piano. What began as a one-off clip of Nat King Cole’s ‘When I Fall in Love’ (‘the song that bound us at the very beginning of our relationship; we actually fell in love over it,’ reveals Urioste) soon grew into something much larger.
‘By day three, people were requesting some weird stuff,’ laughs Poster. Sure enough, alongside Clara Schumann’s Romances and JS Bach’s C minor
Sonata were his own arrangements of
Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven,a Disney medley and even the ubiquitous children’s song Baby Shark. ‘People would request one thing and then stay and hear something they’d never heard before. The guy who requested Led Zeppelin ended up falling in love with Elgar! One of the Jukebox’s positive outcomes was that it showed that you don’t have to put different types of music into pigeonholes.’
News of the Jukebox soon reached Hollywood. ‘Michael Giacchino got in touch to say he’d liked my arrangement of his theme from the film Up, as did Nigel Hess, the composer of Ladies in Lavender,’ Poster recalls. ‘We even got a message saying Ed Sheeran had loved our version of his song “Perfect Symphony”.’
#Uripostejukebox also caught the attention of the Royal Philharmonic Society, which has awarded it one of its new Inspiration Awards (right), introduced in 2020 to celebrate the achievements of those who went above and beyond to make music during lockdown. But the Jukebox wasn’t just an artistic triumph – it also raised some money. ‘With a jukebox, you put in a quarter and get the song of your choice’, says Urioste, ‘so we jokingly suggested that quarters were welcome!’. Quarters quickly became dollars when Victoria Robey – whose house we are borrowing for today’s photo shoot – offered to support a clutch of new commissions to be showcased on the Jukebox platform. ‘Mark Simpson had simultaneously got in
‘We got a message saying Ed Sheeran had loved our version of his track’
touch to say that he’d been watching the Jukebox videos and had been sketching some ideas for us,’ says Poster. Simpson’s new work An Essay of Love – written as a belated wedding gift – became the first of six premieres played on the Jukebox. They have since performed the piece again at Wigmore Hall, a concert that came off the back of their lockdown success. ‘We were able to work with composers who are usually so in demand it would take years to organise,’ says Poster. ‘Suddenly they had time to write these smaller pieces to reflect the lockdown mood.’ Works by Huw Watkins, Clarice Assad, Jessie Montgomery, Cheryl Frances-hoad and Donald Grant followed, interspersed with a high-energy mash-up of Celine Dion’s
My Heart Will Go On, Beyoncé’s Single Ladies and Vanessa-mae’s arrangement of Tartini’s ‘Devil’s Trill’ Sonata, plus Danny Boy and Elgar’s profound and demanding Violin Sonata.
It wasn’t just the repertoire that was challenging – they both tell me that lockdown itself wasn’t always smooth sailing. ‘I threw a few tantrums,’ admits Urioste, throwing a sideways glance to her husband. ‘My allegiance to the project did waver at times, but I feel like you were more level-headed throughout. You were always there to talk me down and I always felt better afterwards, so I have to thank you for that.’ Poster reveals that some days he felt the same. ‘We both struggled. Luckily, most of the time when one
of us was down, the other could lift us up.’ Urioste laughs, thinking about their performance of ‘Feed the Birds’ from Mary Poppins. ‘I was so cranky and miserable that day,’ she grimaces. Poster’s solution? ‘I made her sing and dress up as the Bird Woman while she was in a terrible mood.’
Musical collaboration has always been at the centre of Urioste and Poster’s relationship. They met in 2013 when the BBC brought them together for a radio recital while Urioste was on the New Generation Artists Scheme. Poster had been on the scheme a few years earlier with the Aronowitz Ensemble. The BBC, Urioste suggests, was reluctant to keep flying her piano partner in from the US, so when she had to record a Beethoven sonata and a few miniatures for a radio broadcast, Poster was suggested as an alternative. ‘It was a very natural collaboration, but we had a pint and went our separate ways,’ she says, turning to Poster, who agrees: ‘I thought it would be nice to work together again, but I definitely didn’t think this was the person I would end up marrying!’ A few years later, Urioste was asked to be artist-in-residence at Essex’s Roman River Festival and suggested her future husband as a suitable pianist. ‘She suggested three,’ laughs Poster, ‘but I was the only one free!’ When they started rehearsing, ‘sparks began to fly,’ says Urioste.
In 2018, the pair released Estrellita on BIS Records, a collection of charming miniatures inspired, says Poster, by their ‘shared love of that old-school, warm, Golden Era recital playing’. The album proved to be a rich source of material when programming the Jukebox project, providing a number of pieces including Poster’s own arrangements of Great American Songbook classics, a musical style close to his heart. In 2020, the couple released their second album, To the Spring: Grieg’s three violin sonatas plus their own arrangements of two miniatures by the same composer. The unfortunate date of its March release, this time on Orchid Classics, clashed with the beginning of lockdown. ‘We’d planned to do a number of concerts to coincide with the launch and sell some of those 400 CDS we now have in our living room,’ says Urioste.
As well as playing more traditional works, both are committed to expanding the classical music canon and diversifying the music that’s heard in concert halls.
It’s something that comes from a shared commitment to social justice. ‘George Floyd’s murder and the protests that followed took place towards the end of Jukebox, with racial and social injustices that have always existed rising to the surface,’ reflects Poster. ‘We wondered whether we could continue putting out these light-hearted videos. It made us want to reflect on what the world was going through and amplify the voices of black composers much more.’ Works by Florence Price, Samuel Coleridge-taylor and Stevie Wonder soon made their way onto the Jukebox, along with Sam Cooke’s anthem for the Civil Rights Movement, ‘A Change is Gonna Come’. ‘It’s always been one of my favourite songs, but it felt particularly relevant in that moment,’ explains Poster. ‘I woke up one morning, troubled by everything that was going on, and started feverishly writing an arrangement.’
Much of the music they’re keen to champion is performed by their shared chamber music project, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective. Founded in 2017, the ‘shape-shifting ensemble’ has a flexible line-up featuring artists including cellist Laura van der Heijden, clarinettist
Mark Simpson and cellist Sheku Kanneh-mason. Having started life as an excuse to ‘play music with people we love, who were a wide cast of characters’, Kaleidoscope is fast becoming a prime focus. ‘At least for the immediate future, chamber music definitely seems to hold more possibilities for people to make music with each other,’ explains Urioste.
But is there a future for the #Uripostejukebox? One chapter might have closed, but Urioste and Poster are now busy incorporating it into live concerts. It seems they are keen to bring together the different strands of their respective careers in a new education project, combining the ‘audience requests’ element of Jukebox to their work with Kaleidoscope, as well as the breathing and wellness aspects of Urioste’s Intermission retreats. They’ve already partnered with the Benedetti Foundation to host a virtual chamber music weekend.
But one thing’s certain: the streaming element of Jukebox is here to stay. ‘I think combining audiences on and offline is a wonderful thing,’ says Poster. ‘The fact that Elena’s grandmother in Florida can watch her concerts wherever she is in the world is great.’ Urioste nods enthusiastically. ‘I think it’s a really positive step in terms of fostering interest from new audiences, which may end up translating to bums on seats. No one knows what will happen to the industry further down the line, but in the meantime, this is definitely an avenue that deserves equal attention. After all, I’d rather play Florence Price to someone than no one: who cares how they come to it?’
Whatever happens next for Urioste and Poster, this year won’t be one they forget any time soon: they’ve certainly taken their careers in surprising new directions and spent a lot more time together than most internationally touring musicians. ‘There were a lot of things we didn’t expect from our first year of marriage: one was a global lockdown, the other was getting to see each other literally every day,’ says Poster. ‘We’d never spent more than a month together,’ agrees Urioste. ‘As it turns out, we really like each other!’ They might even finally get to do that honeymoon.
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