Elena Urioste

For booking inquiries, please contact Andre Dowell at Andre@SphinxMusic.org

Elena Urioste

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 cover of Symphony magazine. She has given acclaimed performances with major orchestras throughout the United States, including the Philadelphia and Cleveland Orchestras; Boston Pops; New York and Buffalo Philharmonics; and the Chicago, San Francisco, National, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Austin, Charleston, Richmond, and San Antonio Symphony Orchestras. Abroad, Elena has appeared with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Hallé Orchestra, 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 return performances with the Cleveland and Hallé Orchestras and the Chicago and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, as well as a tour of Argentina with the New York Youth Symphony. This season sees debuts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Albany Symphony Orchestra; a recital debut at the Kennedy Center with pianist Michael Brown; and performances with the Brown-Urioste-Canellakis Trio in New York City, Chicago, and San Diego, among many others.

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 Keith Lockhart; 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 and the Verbier Festival’s winter residency at Schloss Elmau. She regularly performs in a piano trio with pianist Michael Brown and cellist Nicholas Canellakis, as well as in recital with Michael Brown and pianist 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; a disc of violin and piano miniatures with Tom Poster will be released in 2017. Elena is the co-founder and artistic director of Intermission Sessions & Retreat, a new program that combines music and yoga.

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, ridiculously long walks, and goofy-looking animals; hopeless dreamer; and occasional scarf-knitter.