Elena Urioste
amusingly hailed by The Washington Post as “a drop-dead beauty who plays with equal parts passion, sensuality, brains and humor,” was recently selected as a BBC New Generation Artist and has been featured on the covers of Strings and Symphony magazines. She has given acclaimed performances with major orchestras throughout the United States, including the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras; Boston Pops; New York, Los Angeles, and Buffalo Philharmonics; and the Chicago, San Francisco, National, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Austin, Charleston, Richmond, and San Antonio Symphony Orchestras, among others. Abroad, Elena has appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra of Opera North, BBC Symphony, BBC Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Edmonton Symphony, Würzburg Philharmonic, and Hungary’s Orchestra Dohnányi Budafok and MAV Orchestras. She has regularly performed as a featured soloist in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium and has given recitals in such distinguished venues as the Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Konzerthaus Berlin, the Sage Gateshead in Newcastle, Bayerischer Rudfunk Munich, and the Mondavi Center at the University of California-Davis.

Recent season highlights have included debuts with the LA Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, and Orchestra of Opera North; return performances with the Cleveland and Hallé Orchestras and the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestras; a recital debut at the Kennedy Center with pianist Michael Brown; and three separate concerto and chamber music appearances in Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall in the 2017/18 season. Upcoming highlights include subscription debuts with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre National de Lille, in addition to the release of Elena’s second album on BIS Records, Estrellita, a collection of miniatures for violin and piano with pianist Tom Poster.

As first-place laureate in both the Junior and Senior divisions of the Sphinx Competition, Elena debuted at Carnegie Hall’s Isaac Stern Auditorium in 2004 and has returned frequently as soloist. She has collaborated with acclaimed conductors Sir Mark Elder, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Christoph Eschenbach, Robert Spano, and Gábor Takács-Nagy; pianists Mitsuko Uchida, Dénes Várjon, and Ignat Solzhenitsyn; cellists Peter Wiley, Colin Carr, and Carter Brey; violists Kim Kashkashian and Michael Tree; and violinists Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, and Cho-Liang Lin. An avid chamber musician as well as soloist, Elena has been a featured artist at the Marlboro, Ravinia, La Jolla, Bridgehampton, Moab, and Sarasota Music Festivals, as well as Switzerland’s Sion-Valais International Music Festival, the Verbier Festival’s winter residency at Schloss Elmau, and is a regular at the Roman River Music Festival in Essex, England. She performs extensively in recital with pianists Michael Brown and Tom Poster.

Miscellaneous accomplishments include first prizes at the Sphinx and Sion International Violin Competitions; an inaugural Sphinx Medal of Excellence presented by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (they immediately bonded over their matching red formal wear); spreads in Latina and La Revista Mujer magazines; and the 2015 Brooklyn Film Festival’s Audience Choice and Best Original Score awards for But Not For Me, the independent feature film in which Elena acted as the lead female role. Her second album, Echoes, a recital disc with Michael Brown, was released on BIS Records in October 2016. Elena is the co-founder and artistic director of Intermission Sessions & Retreat, a program that combines music and yoga; and the founder and artistic director of Chamber Music by the Sea, an annual summer chamber music festival on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Elena is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music where she studied with Joseph Silverstein, Pamela Frank, and Ida Kavafian. She completed graduate studies with Joel Smirnoff at The Juilliard School. Other notable teachers include David Cerone, Choong-Jin Chang, Soovin Kim, and Rafael Druian.

The outstanding instruments being used by Elena are an Alessandro Gagliano violin, Naples c. 1706, and a Nicolas Kittel bow, both on generous extended loan from the private collection of Dr. Charles E. King through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

In addition to being a devoted musician, Elena is a yoga fanatic; voracious reader; lover of delicious food, semi-colons, and corgis; hopeless dreamer; and occasional scarf-knitter.

Tom Poster
is a musician whose skills and passions extend well beyond the conventional role of the concert pianist. In demand internationally as soloist and chamber musician across an unusually extensive repertoire, 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).

Since his London concerto debut at the age of 13, Tom has appeared in a wide-ranging concerto repertoire of over 40 major works. Equally at home in the high-octane virtuosity of Rachmaninov or Ligeti as directing Mozart and Beethoven from the piano, Tom has appeared as soloist with the Aurora Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, China National Symphony, English Chamber Orchestra, European Union Chamber Orchestra, London Mozart Players, Hallé, Royal Philharmonic, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, St Petersburg State Capella Philharmonic and Ulster Orchestra, collaborating with conductors such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Nicholas Collon, Thierry Fischer, James Loughran, En Shao, Robin Ticciati and Yan Pascal Tortelier. Two major new concertos have recently been written for Tom: David Knotts’ Laments and Lullabies, commissioned by the Presteigne Festival; and Martin Suckling’s Piano Concerto, commissioned by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra. In 2018, Tom makes his debut with the Philharmonia at the Royal Festival Hall.

Tom features regularly on BBC radio and television and has made multiple appearances at the BBC Proms. His exceptional versatility has put him in great demand at festivals, and those with which he has enjoyed close associations include the Aberystwyth, Cambridge, Hatfield House, North Norfolk, Oxford Lieder, Presteigne, Roman River, Spoleto, Two Moors and Weesp Festivals, and IMS Prussia Cove. He is a regular performer at Wigmore Hall, and is pianist of the Poster-Johnston Trio and the Aronowitz Ensemble (former BBC New Generation Artists), appearing at the Concertgebouw and the Aldeburgh, Bath and Cheltenham Festivals. Tom enjoys established duo partnerships with Alison Balsom, Guy Johnston, and Elena Urioste, with whom he makes his debut at New York's Carnegie Hall in 2018. He also collaborates with Ian Bostridge, Laura van der Heijden, Steven Isserlis and Huw Watkins, and has performed piano quintets with the Brodsky, Callino, Carducci, Castalian, Danish, Elias, Endellion, Heath, Martinu, Medici, Navarra, Sacconi, Skampa and Tippett Quartets. ​

Tom is increasingly in demand as a curator and innovative concert programmer. In 2017, he curated and performed in four concerts of French chamber music and song for BBC Radio 3 at the Roman River Festival, and held a major residency at Wilton’s Music Hall, in which he featured as both pianist and composer. He is Artistic Director of the newly formed Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, an ensemble with a flexible line-up and a commitment to diversity, whose forthcoming highlights include festivals throughout the UK and a series in Ischia in 2018.

Tom’s critically acclaimed recordings include solo discs for Edition Classics (Light and Shadows) and Champs Hill Records (In Dance and Song); three discs for Chandos with Jennifer Pike and the Doric Quartet; two discs for Sonimage with the Aronowitz Ensemble; Finzi’s Eclogue with Aurora Orchestra for Decca Classics; works by Thomas Ades for EMI; and a duo album with Alison Balsom for Warner Classics. Two discs with violinist Elena Urioste, the first a collection of miniatures (including Tom's own arrangements) and the second featuring the complete Grieg Violin Sonatas, are forthcoming. Tom also regularly features as soloist on film soundtracks, including the Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning score for The Theory of Everything.

Tom studied with Joan Havill at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and at King’s College, Cambridge, where he gained a Double First in Music. He won First Prize at the Scottish International Piano Competition 2007, and the keyboard sections of the Royal Over-Seas League and BBC Young Musician of the Year Competitions in 2000.

As a composer, Tom’s recent commissions include two pieces for Alison Balsom, Turn to the Watery World! and The Thoughts of Dr May, the latter recorded for Warner Classics; and The Depraved Appetite of Tarrare the Freak, a chamber opera for Wattle & Daub, which received a critically acclaimed three-week run at Wilton’s Music Hall in 2017. A lifelong devotee of the Great American Songbook, Tom’s arrangements of Gershwin, Cole Porter and others have been extensively performed, broadcast and recorded. Tom has also recently appeared on stage as conductor, cellist, recorder player, swanee-whistler and Reciter in Walton's Façade. His other passions include Indian food, redwood forests, yoga, contrabassoons, bright blue skies, wild freestyle dancing and animals with unusual noses.