Pianist
Tom Poster is a versatile figure whose talents include composition and ensemble leadership. He has a highly varied repertory, and he has devised unusual programs and composed an opera for puppets.
Poster was born in 1981. He was a prodigy who performed at age ten at the Kettle's Yard gallery at Cambridge University on a BBC World Service broadcast. At 13, he gave his first recital in London. At the Guildhall School of Music and Drama,
Poster studied with Joan Havill. He received the BBC Young Musician of the Year award in the keyboard section in 2000 and first prize at the Scottish International Piano Competition in 2007.
Poster has appeared as a recitalist at the BBC Proms and often on the BBC Radio 3 network, as well as at such venues as the Barbican in London and venues in Canada and around continental Europe. He has a repertory of more than 40 concertos ranging from
Mozart to
György Ligeti and has performed them with groups including the
BBC Philharmonic,
Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and
China National Symphony.
Poster is widely known as a chamber musician. As pianist of the Aronowitz Ensemble, he has appeared at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Wigmore Hall in London, and a variety of British festivals.
Poster has ongoing collaborations with violinists
Jennifer Pike and
Elena Urioste (the latter is his wife), trumpeter
Alison Balsom, and cellist
Guy Johnston, and he has accompanied tenor
Ian Bostridge and cellist
Steven Isserlis. He has played piano quintets with numerous prominent string quartets, including the
Brodsky,
Martinu, and
Navarra Quartets, and he has made several recordings as a chamber musician. His debut came on the Chandos label in 2013 in a performance of Chausson's Concerto for violin, piano, and string quartet, Op. 21. His arrangements of songs by
George Gershwin and
Cole Porter have been widely performed.
Poster is the founder of the
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, a group devoted to diversity in its programming that was named associate ensemble at Wigmore Hall in 2020. That year,
Poster and
Urioste launched the #UriPosteJukebox online series of 88 performances of listener requests, featuring
Poster not only as a pianist but as a multi-instrumentalist, arranger, curator, and even backing dancer. The project won the Royal Philharmonic Society's Inspiration Award and spawned a recording,
The Jukebox Album, released on the Orchid Classics label in 2021. ~ James Manheim