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.

As for the 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.