Elena Urioste
Elena Urioste brings virtuosity, expressive freedom, and a distinctive warmth to her work as a violinist. A natural collaborator with a wide-ranging curiosity, she moves easily between the concerto stage, chamber music, and projects that draw connections between repertoire, people, and ideas. Alongside performing, she is a passionate advocate for musicians’ wellbeing, exploring the relationship between music, movement, and mindfulness through her work as a teacher and yoga practitioner.
As a concerto soloist, Urioste has appeared with major orchestras across the United States, including the Philadelphia, Cleveland and Minnesota Orchestras, the New York, Los Angeles and Buffalo Philharmonics, and Boston Pops, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, San Francisco, and Detroit Symphony Orchestras. In the UK, she has worked with London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé, Philharmonia, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and all the BBC orchestras. Among the conductors she has collaborated with are Sir Mark Elder, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Christoph Eschenbach, Robert Spano, Karina Canellakis, Dalia Stasevska, and Gábor Takács-Nagy.
Last season, she returned to Baltimore Symphony and Orchestra of Opera North and made her debuts with Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Brighton Philharmonic. In 2026/27 she appears with London Philharmonic Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic, makes her debut with Oregon Symphony and records concertos by Sir Charles Stanford with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Equally at home in recital, she has performed at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, Kennedy Center, Konzerthaus Berlin, Sage Gateshead, and Bayerischer Rundfunk Munich. She performs frequently alongside pianist Tom Poster, with whom she has built one of today's most distinctive violin-and-piano partnerships.
Chamber music lies at the heart of Urioste’s artistic identity. She collaborates with artists such as Mitsuko Uchida, Hilary Hahn, Steven Isserlis, James Ehnes, Kim Kashkashian, and members of the Guarneri Quartet. With Poster, she founded Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, Wigmore Hall's Associate Ensemble, whose inventive programming combines established masterpieces with overlooked repertoire and new commissions. Last season the group made its debut at the Concertgebouw and in 2026/27 it takes up residency at Urioste’s alma mater, Curtis Institute of Music. She is also the founder and Artistic Director of Chamber Music by the Sea, an annual festival on Maryland's Eastern Shore. She has also been a featured artist at festivals including Marlboro, Ravinia, La Jolla, Bridgehampton, Moab, and Sarasota.
Urioste’s wide-ranging discography reflects the same spirit of exploration. Recent recordings with Tom Poster include Le Temps retrouvé (2026) and the BBC Music Magazine Award-winning Jukebox Album (2021). In 2026, Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective released two albums, of music by Enescu and piano quartets by Brahms and Pejačević. Urioste has also recorded Max Richter's The New Four Seasons: Vivaldi Recomposed on period instruments and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Violin Concerto with Chineke! Orchestra.
Alongside her performing career, Urioste is a passionate advocate for musicians' physical and mental wellbeing. A qualified yoga teacher, she co-founded Intermission, an initiative that integrates music, movement and mindfulness to support healthier, more sustainable music-making. In 2026, she joined the violin faculty of the Royal Academy of Music, where her teaching reflects the same holistic philosophy that underpins her performing career.
A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, her mentors and teachers have included Joseph Silverstein, David Cerone, Ida Kavafian, Pamela Frank, Claude Frank, Choong-Jin Chang, Soovin Kim, and Ferenc Rados. She is a prizewinner of both the Sphinx and Sion International Violin Competitions, and recipient of the inaugural Sphinx Medal of Excellence. In 2026, she was awarded an honorary degree from the Royal Academy of Music, and previously won Royal Philharmonic Society’s 2020 Inspiration Award and its 2021 Enterprise Fund Trailblazer Grant, for her #UriPosteJukeBox project with Tom Poster. She took the lead role acting in the 2015 independent film But Not for Me, winning Brooklyn Film Festival’s Audience Choice and Best Original Score. A former BBC New Generation Artist (2012–14), she has been featured on the covers of Strings, Symphony, and BBC Music magazines, as well as in Latina and La Revista Mujer. She also writes and has her own blog.
Urioste performs on an Alessandro Gagliano violin, Naples c.1706, and a Nicolas Kittel bow, both generously loaned by Dr Charles E. King through the Stradivari Society of Chicago.