offstage | Elena Urioste, violin

19 for 19 violinist Elena Urioste performs Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe's Sonata No. 3 in D minor (Ballade). It’s often said that contemporary classical artists need to approach their careers with a degree of flexibility, and violinist Elena Urioste takes that literally. The self-confessed “yoga fanatic” recently co-founded (with fellow violinist Melissa White) a music and yoga program called Intermission, which addresses how the physical toll of being a professional musician is largely overlooked. A first-prize laureate in the Sphinx Competition, Urioste made her debut at Carnegie Hall some 15 years ago, and since then has performed with some of the world’s greats, including the New York, Los Angeles and London philharmonics, the Philadelphia and Cleveland orchestras and the Chicago and San Francisco symphony orchestras. This season she plays such monuments of the solo repertoire as the Beethoven, Barber, Korngold and Tchaikovsky concertos. Equally devoted to chamber music, her latest album is Estrellita, a collection of glittering miniatures performed with pianist Tom Poster. She recently described the project as their bid to bring “even a teensy amount of joy to the world.” Urioste, who also writes an engaging and thought-provoking blog, has certainly come a long way since watching a 1998 episode of Sesame Street featuring Itzhak Perlman when she was only two. We can’t wait to see what she gets up to next.