The COVID-19 pandemic generated various home recording projects, some more successful than others. The Jukebox Album is different from the others. Violinist Elena Urioste and pianist Tom Poster, who are married, found themselves locked down in Philadelphia in 2020 and decided to offer daily videos, soliciting requests from their online community. Like everyone else, they envisioned just two or three weeks of lockdown, but they ended up making 88 videos, one for each key on the piano, and their popularity grew and gained ...
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The COVID-19 pandemic generated various home recording projects, some more successful than others. The Jukebox Album is different from the others. Violinist Elena Urioste and pianist Tom Poster, who are married, found themselves locked down in Philadelphia in 2020 and decided to offer daily videos, soliciting requests from their online community. Like everyone else, they envisioned just two or three weeks of lockdown, but they ended up making 88 videos, one for each key on the piano, and their popularity grew and gained wide publicity in Poster's native Britain, eventually winning an award from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The Jukebox Album grew out of that project. Instead of the original performances, it offers new recordings of some of the pieces involved; sadly, Poster's Come on Eileen - Toxic - Baby Shark mashup is not included here, but the duo has included itself among the requesters, commissioning several new works for the program. These have the virtue of fitting in well with the mix of classical salon favorites like Cécile Chaminade's Serénade Espagnole and popular songs that came down from the original jukebox project. The original requests were opened up to anything that the duo could arrange for violin and piano (Poster also plays other instruments, including a kazoo), and several of Poster's felicitous arrangements, some involving multi-tracking, are included here. The best feature is that the spontaneity and fun of the original project is retained, and the diversity of material seems not executed to make a point but to emerge naturally. Recommended as a positive souvenir of a grim time. ~ James Manheim, Rovi
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