Elena Urioste will take a deep breath before performing in New Haven Thursday. She’ll invite her audience to do the same.
Urioste — a London-based world-traveling violin soloist with major orchestras around the country — is spending three days in New Haven performing music and teaching … yoga. She sees the two as connected.
She’s performing at the Schwarzman Center with the touring Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective and popping in to Neighborhood Music School to work with the students. She is also leading Bikram Yoga classes, which she has been licensed to do since 2019 with a focus on the practice’s connection to performing music.
Urioste stopped by WNHH FM as well to perform a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” and discuss her double-discipline journey.
It began at 2 years old, when she saw Itzhak Perlman play violin on Sesame Street. By the time she was taking Suzuki classes at her Philadelphia area public school at age 5, she knew she intended to play solo violin in orchestras.
She achieved her goal by her early 20s. In 2009 she discovered her passion for yoga as well.
“From the first class that I went to in 2009 I was just immediately hooked. I found a sense of bodily presence that I had never known before,” Urioste recalled on WNHH. “Instantly I found a greater sense of strength and peace in my body.”
She wasn’t looking for help with her musical performance in the yoga practice. She found it anyway: She discovered she was leaning too much on one foot, strengthening one leg over another; she adjusted her balance. Her posture got straighter, more centered. Her arms felt more connected to the rest of her body, her body more connected to the playing. Her playing became more accurate; she needed less practice to get parts right. She found her attention more focused.
Her breathing became “more conscious and intentional,” in a flow state that united approaches to yoga and music. She was able to “lose” herself and “let breath” be her “guide.”
She pursued certification to share that idea with others. She teaches workshops for musicians aiming to “allow them to feel the benefits of bodily awareness, joint alignments, using your breath as a guide for playing music and just generally making the process of practicing and performing a much happier, more holistic enterprise.”
Urioste’s performances with The Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective at the Schwarzman Center will begin Thursday at 4 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. (Register here for a spot on the waiting list.) She’s also teaching several yoga classes there for musicians. (Sign up here.) In each case, she said, she will begin with a group breathing exercise, so both performers and attendees can find themselves flowing with the music that follows.
Click on the below video to watch violinist Elena Urioste perform “Over the Rainbow” and discuss her career on a special Tuesday edition of “Acoustic Thursday @ Studio 51” on WNHH FM.
