THE JUKEBOX ALBUM

On March 17, 2020, we made the rather ambitious – and, it should be noted, jet-lagged – decision to record and share one music video for every day we would spend in isolation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In retrospect, it was a bold choice – little did we know that our imagined two-to-three weeks of lockdown would turn into 88 days of musical mini-adventures, one for each key of the piano.

We named our pandemic project #UriPosteJukeBox, a portmanteau of our last names plus a nod to a more old-timey method of enjoying music, and decided that it would be our method of keeping our minds and fingers sharp during the following period of unemployment, when we might otherwise have lost the motivation to practise regularly. We asked our virtual following what they might like to hear us play, and were flooded with requests, from Mozart and Messiaen to Britney Spears and The Wheels on the Bus. Our first few videos drew a much wider audience than we were anticipating, and we soon found ourselves on a rather surreal transatlantic call to BBC Radio 3’s In Tune, discussing Tom’s medley of Come On Eileen, Toxic, and Baby Shark. As the days went by, Tom set to work producing elaborate new arrangements and transcriptions, Elena devised increasingly outrageous costumes (from nuns and giant corgis to the Tin Teletubby of Oz), multi-tracking apps were exploited, imaginary barriers between musical genres were gleefully dissolved, and we found ourselves endlessly touched by the wonderful community that built up around the world, of friends old and new.

A further twist to the project came when one of our dear friends and champions, Victoria Robey, reached out to us to ask if we might use #UriPosteJukeBox as a vehicle to introduce new works commissioned through her generous support. By a happy coincidence, the brilliant British composer Mark Simpson had just been in touch to say he’d started writing us a piece, so his An Essay of Love launched #UriPostePremieres, followed by five more ‘corona commissions’ from Clarice Assad, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Huw Watkins, Donald Grant, and Jessie Montgomery. It means the world to us that these outstanding composers, all of whom we love dearly as musicians and friends, were able to create such meaningful reflections on a deeply strange time at such short notice, and it is a joy to give all six commissions their official studio recording premieres here.

As for the other selections featured on this album, we were determined to stay true to the eclecticism which became such a hallmark of the JukeBox, with all the music given equal commitment, love and care, no matter its origin or instrumentation. We’ve chosen a number of the arrangements Tom made specially for the JukeBox, some duo pieces which deserve to be far better known, and – of course – something with kazoos.

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The opening number, Jerome Kern’s Look for the Silver Lining, was an eleventh-hour addition to the album, arranged by Tom the night before our recording sessions, in true #UriPosteJukeBox style. We were searching for something to welcome the listener with the right sense of optimism and warmth, and found it in this gorgeous song, one of Kern’s earliest hits, from 1919. It’s the first of a number of items on the album featuring Elena layering multiple violin parts in close harmony – our tribute to a golden era of sumptuous string arrangements – and it seemed fitting to open with a grateful nod to our beloved Great American Songbook.

Just five years before Kern’s song, in 1914, the tragically short-lived Lili Boulanger penned her unusually upbeat, sparkling Cortège (a term more often used to describe a funeral procession). We have preceded it with the slow Introduction which appears only on the 1930 recording of Cortège made by violinist Yvonne Astruc and Lili’s sister Nadia Boulanger, and which appears never to have been published. The Introduction is so bewitchingly beautiful that we were absolutely determined to include it on our recording, so – in the absence of an existing score – Tom decided to transcribe it by ear from the old scratchy record.

Mark Simpson’s dazzling, passionate An Essay of Love was the piece that inspired and began our series of six premieres. Responding to the worldwide lockdown in spring 2020, Mark writes: “I wanted to write something that attempted to bridge the gap between the desire to carry on performing and the questioning nature that a period of introspection brings. In Robert Frost’s poem Too Anxious for Rivers, the search for and exploration of the Ultimate Truth resonated with these sentiments. At the end, the only thing that counts is ‘the essay of love’, the impetus that moves the world and man. This piece is also a celebration of the love between Tom and Elena, and a belated wedding gift to them.”

A nostalgic classic needing little introduction, La Vie en rose was the subject of multiple listeners’ requests; as it happens, Elena had also been asking Tom for some time for an arrangement of Édith Piaf’s signature song. Written in a pavement cafe on the Champs Elysées shortly before the end of World War II, La Vie en rose is a song of giddy romance, of seeing the world afresh.

Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s radiant miniature Bloom drew inspiration, in her words, from “the blossom on local fruit trees that I have watched developing and blooming in the past weeks. I have taken comfort from paying really close attention to nature in the Close where I live on the outskirts of Bedford, closely watching the daily changes, and hope the meditative effect this has had on me comes across in the piece. When writing, I simply had the idea of a slowly opening bud in my mind, and in the music this is reflected in the piano chords, which gradually cover more and more of the piano!”. One of our guidelines to all the commissioned composers was that the piano where we were staying with Elena’s parents was quite out of tune; Cheryl kept that in mind when writing, choosing harmonies and intervals which “I hope can be played without aural irritation on slightly out of tune home pianos anywhere at this time…”

Cécile Chaminade was among the most successful composer-pianists of the late romantic period, though her exquisite salon music gradually fell out of fashion. The irresistible Sérénade espagnole was originally published in 1895 as a song for voice and piano, but is here re-arranged by one of our musical heroes, Fritz Kreisler, with his trademark elegance and an inspired use of violin harmonics to conjure up the effect of whistling in the final refrain.

And from a French composer inspired by Spain to the wonderful French-born Argentine singer-composer Carlos Gardel, often described as the King of Tango. Written in 1935, very shortly before the tragic plane crash which ended Gardel’s life, we can think of few melodies more beautiful than El día que me quieras (The day that you love me), in which Elena gets to duet with herself.

Composer-singer-pianist Clarice Assad is a member of one of Brazil’s most acclaimed musical families. She describes her soulful lament, Emotiva, as “an emotional response to the early days in quarantine solitude, filled with nostalgia, and a certain amount of anxiety about the future. The melodic phrases are imagined as spoken words, either as questions or answers, by a character who expresses their emotion to someone who listens without judgment – never asserting or interrupting – simply accepting facts and offering comfort in the wisdom of their silence.”

The beguine is a slow, sensual dance from the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, whose fame beyond the Caribbean is largely due to one of Cole Porter’s most beguiling songs, Begin the Beguine, written on an ocean liner between Indonesia and Fiji in 1935. Unusually for a popular song, it’s entirely through-composed – rather than repeating the same melody for each stanza of text, Porter takes the music somewhere new every time. The composer’s own highly evocative lyrics, in which the strains of the beguine (here harmonised by three Elenas) stir memories of a lost love, conjure up a world of romance and enchantment.

Something of the beguine’s syncopated rhythm is echoed in the gently pulsing piano writing which underpins Fauré’s exquisite and little-known Andante, believed to be reworked material from the slow movement of his ill-fated (and never-completed) violin concerto. Even in this miniature, Fauré’s music – serene eloquence enclosing sensuous passions – transports us to another world.

Often described as being quintessentially British, the evergreen classic A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square was actually written in a French village by the American composer Manning Sherwin, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. We were unable to resist adding a few hints of birdsong to this arrangement of a song that has been a favourite of Tom’s since his teenage adventures as an occasional hotel lounge pianist.

There’s a feeling of suspended time in the translucent Arietta of Huw Watkins, which the composer describes as “a quiet moment of introspection, where the violin’s melody unfolds slowly, suspended above the piano’s gentle harmonic web.”

And out of the silence comes the album’s second delectable Kreisler arrangement, this time of a much-loved traditional Irish melody which goes by multiple names. Kreisler himself refers to it as Farewell to Cucullain; the melody itself is more commonly called Londonderry Air; but it’s probably best known by a lyric added in the early 20th century, Danny Boy. It was a request from Tom’s old friend Tam, whose son – named Danny – was born during the lockdown.

Stephen Sondheim has been a hero of Tom’s since childhood, and his 90th birthday occurred in the early days of the 2020 pandemic. Send in the Clowns, his most famous song, was a suggestion from multiple listeners, including Tom’s mum Kay, and Elena’s grandma Mary. Written at the eleventh hour for Sondheim’s 1973 masterpiece A Little Night Music, Send in the Clowns is a song of regret and vulnerability, of roads not taken – though thankfully it leads to happier places, as a nod to which we added the ‘orchestral’ climax from its reprise in the show.

Jessie Montgomery’s haunting Peace was originally going to be entitled Melancholy, but she “didn’t want to be a downer for the people”. Reflecting many of our feelings, she says: “I’m struggling during quarantine to define what actually brings me joy. And I’m at a stage of making peace with sadness as it comes and goes like any other emotion. I’m learning to observe sadness for the first time not as a negative emotion, but as a necessary dynamic to the human experience.”

Donald Grant’s heartfelt, folk-inspired compositions have the air of instant classics. Donald describes how he “grew up in the Highlands of Scotland and was surrounded by both folk and classical music. My father was a Gaelic singer and teacher and my first introduction to music was through Gaelic song. This title Bha là eile ann (There was a different day) is an old Gaelic proverb used by the older generation to describe the days gone by and the feats that are no longer possible. It seemed apt for this time. I hope it reminds Tom and Elena of their recent honeymoon in Scotland and driving up through Glen Coe. As soon as this isolation period ends I will jump in my car and be there myself. I’ll toast to their good health and to sunnier times for us all.”

And by way of a sunny conclusion, a premiere recording of a work written specially for us by the enigmatic Pteromost, rumoured to be part-goblin, and to travel only by mooseback. Strangely, he and Tom have never been sighted in the same room as each other. We have every reason to believe that Pteromost’s Jukebox Toodle-oo is the only work in existence scored for three violins, cello, piano, two recorders, three kazoos and swanee whistle.

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We are endlessly indebted to all of our listeners who requested the music which shaped the JukeBox journey (and ultimately this album), and of course to Victoria Robey OBE for enabling six brilliant new pieces to spring to life. Additionally, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Elena’s parents, Annette and Marcus, who very kindly and patiently tolerated nearly three months of shushing, closet ransacking, and the occasional expletive as we filmed each day, sometimes for hours at a time. We must also credit their dog, Joey, for his (mostly) good behaviour and his acting cameos throughout the series. Thanks too to the community of Maryland’s Eastern Shore for their encouragement and auxiliary instrument loans; to our generous supporters around the world who donated quarters and more throughout the project; to the multi-talented composer-artist Lila Wildy Quillin for her amazing cover design; and to the Royal Philharmonic Society (and all those who voted) for recognising #UriPosteJukeBox with the honour of a 2020 Inspiration Award. Lastly, the hugest thanks to Matthew Trusler at Orchid Classics and our brilliant producer-engineer-filmmaker Patrick Allen, not least for their staggering open-mindedness when we announced that we’d like to make an album with multi-tracked kazoos.

We should note that it was a surprisingly wistful process looking back on all of the JukeBox repertoire in preparation for this album, almost exactly a year after our first episode launched. There’s always been an element of nostalgia to the project, with the jukebox itself representing a throwback to a simpler way of listening to music – you put a quarter in the machine, choose your song, and your request is honoured. Looking back through our 88 daily music videos brings up a multitude of emotions: that specific brand of uncertainty that we all felt at the start of the first lockdown; the collective sorrow we grappled with as our lives as we knew them disappeared out from under us; and that unifying sense of being all in this together, even though we had no idea for how long or to what degree. While we as musicians hope never to find ourselves in such an uncomfortable spot again, we do hope the feeling of community – which brought us so much joy and solace – sticks, and that we can again and again turn to music to help us through times of uncertainty and bring us all together.