MAHANI TEAVE concert pianist  educator  environmental activist

ABOUT MAHANI

Award-winning pianist and humanitarian Mahani Teave is a pioneering artist who bridges the creative world with education and environmental activism. The only professional classical musician on her native Easter Island, she is an important cultural ambassador to this legendary, cloistered area of Chile. Her debut album, Rapa Nui Odyssey, launched as number one on the Classical Billboard charts and received raves from critics, including BBC Music Magazine, which noted her “natural pianism” and “magnificent artistry.”

Believing in the profound, healing power of music, she has performed globally, from the stages of the world’s foremost concert halls on six continents, to hospitals, schools, jails, and low-income areas. Twice distinguished as one of the 100 Women Leaders of Chile, she has performed for its five past presidents and in its Embassy, along with those in Germany, Indonesia, Mexico, China, Japan, Ecuador, Korea, Mexico, and symbolic places including Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, Chile’s Palacio de La Moneda, and Chilean Congress.

Her passion for classical music, her local culture, and her Island’s environment, along with an intense commitment to high-quality music education for children, inspired Mahani to set aside her burgeoning career at the age of 30 and return to her Island to found the non-profit organization Toki Rapa Nui with Enrique Icka, creating the first School of Music and the Arts of Easter Island. A self-sustaining ecological wonder, the school offers both classical and traditional Polynesian lessons in various instruments to over 100 children. Toki Rapa Nui offers not only musical, but cultural, social and ecological support for its students and the area. It’s infrastructure, recognized by a Recyclápolis Environmental National Award and built by the organization, is unique to Latin America and Polynesia; it uses recyclable materials, solar energy and water collectors, and the organization has developed a large organic agro- ecological project for food sovereignty.

Her inspirational story was chronicled by 15-time Emmy Award-winning filmmaker John Forsen in a new documentary, Song of Rapa Nui, available globally on Amazon Prime Video. Recent and upcoming features include The New York Times, NPR, CBS Sunday Morning, PBS Newshour, Graydon Carter’s Airmail, the BBC, MPR’s Performance Today, CNN en Español, Amanpour and Company on CNN and PBS, Gramophone magazine and more.

Mahani is the winner of numerous international piano competitions and awards, including the APES Prize for best classical music performance in Chile (where she performed Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 1 with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Chile), the Claudio Arrau International Piano Competition, the Merit Prize (arts) from Andrés Bello University, and the Cleveland Institute of Music’s Concerto Competition. In addition, she received the Advancement of Women Award from Scotiabank for her leadership and work promoting music on Easter Island, and was made honorary VP of the World Indigenous Business Forum in 2017.

Making her debut at the age of nine, Mahani joined famed Chilean pianist Roberto Bravo on a series of concert tours. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree, with highest honors, from Austral University in Valdivia, Chile, her Masters degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Sergei Babayan, and completed her post- graduate studies in Berlin, Germany, studying with Fabio Bidini at the Hanns Eisler Musik Hochschule.

Mahani currently lives on Easter Island, combining concert tours with leading the Music School and motherhood. Mahani is a Steinway artist. She was “rediscovered” in 2018, which led to her debut recording, Rapa Nui Odyssey; A Mahani Teave Piano Recital, released January of 2021 on the Rubicon Classics Label to glowing reviews.

PRESS

CNN INTERNATIONAL / CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR “A musical odyssey to one of the most remote places on Earth… a fascinating story...her wonderful music”

GRAMOPHONE [UK] “Breadth and grandeur… heroic rhetoric and caressing lyricism… exquisitely poised… genuine eloquence. As fulfilling and enriching the musical culture of Rapa Nui surely must be, one hopes that Mahani Teave will somehow find a way to share her beautifully wrought, heartfelt pianism with audiences beyond her remote island.”

RADIO NATIONAL [AUSTRALIA] “A stunning new album”

RECORD GEIJUTSU MAGAZINE [JAPAN] 'Tokusen' (CD of the Month) “I was also very surprised to hear this recording...filled with wonderful elegance...Chopin's "Barcarolle" reminds me of Dinu Lipatti.”

CLASSICALMUSIC Magazine (BBC) [UK] “Natural pianism. There’s genuine virtuosity, without one note of bluff, bluster or vulgarity…wide expressive range exquisitely controlled and intensely poetic…sincere, pure and magnificent artistry.”

FRANCE MUSIQUE [FRANCE] “Mahani Teave, the virtuoso pianist from Easter Island...An exemplary journey.”

GRAMOPHONE [UK] “Teave’s Chopin-playing inhabits a world all its own, almost painterly in its subtle colours and marked everywhere by an exquisitely poised cantabile… a sensitive diptych of genuine eloquence.”

CONCERTONET “This isn’t your ordinary “Piano Recital!!” Perhaps being raised on a remote island in the South Pacific brings with it a nuanced suavity. Mahani Teave’s style has a gauzy, breezy trim in the sails. What a sendoff!”

BBC NEWS [UK] “She is regarded as one of the region’s finest pianists.”

CHILENOW [CHILE] “The young virtuoso…impressed with her talent, skill, and aplomb…received standing ovation at concert at the Embassy of Chile.”

CNN EN ESPANOL “Virtuoso pianist”

ICIMAG [CANADA] “…a woman with great charisma and a wisdom that is overwhelming given her early age. Pianist, director of an NGO, mother, referent of an original culture. It is not surprising, then, that in 2007 she was chosen among the 100 Women Leaders in the country, by the Mujeres Empresarias foundation and the newspaper El Mercurio, and that in 2016 she was distinguished with the Advancement of Women Award, from Scotiabank, for her leadership, discipline and entrepreneurial capacity.”

TRAVELPULSE “Mahani Teave—guardian of the island’s traditions and an internationally recognized pianist.”

EL DIARIO [MEXICO] “Few artists have achieved what the Chilean pianist Mahani Teave achieved at the Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda venue…inexhaustible energy and passion. The outstanding national artist captivated the audience”

TELETRECE/T13 [CHILE] “Cool women: Mahani Teave, the virtuoso pianist”

Mahani Teave is the First Chilean Artist to Reach #1 on the Billboard Classical Charts

(As announced by the Sociedad Chilena de Autores e Intérpretes Musicales, SCD Chile)

15-time Emmy Award-winning Director/Producer John Forsen’s documentary film about Mahani Teave nominated for 2021 NATAS NW Emmy Award in the category of Documentary – Cultural/Historical.

natasnw.org/nominations-recipients

Credit...Miguel Sayago/Alamy Photo

By Thomas May Feb. 26, 2021

From her home, halfway up the highest hill on Rapa Nui, Mahani Teave was describing the power of nature there to overwhelm.

“On one side, I have an almost 180-degree view of the ocean,” she said in a recent interview. “A big fog is coming in from the hill on the other side.”

The profusion of stars gives the black of the sky a seemingly “papier-mâché texture,” she said. When the sounds of crickets cease, profound silence completes “a stunning experience for the senses.”

Teave, 38, learned to appreciate such stirring encounters while growing up on Rapa Nui — also known as Easter Island, the name imposed by European interlopers in 1722. From there, one of the remotest inhabited islands on the planet, this pianist went on to earn a place on the international concert stage. But rather than press on with a career of incessant touring, and quite possibly the only professional classical performer to emerge from Rapa Nui to date, she decided to return and establish the first music school on the small island nearly a decade ago.

But she hasn’t stopped playing. Teave’s debut album, “Rapa Nui Odyssey,” was recently released on the British label Rubicon Classics. The recording project inspired “Song of Rapa Nui,” a new documentary streaming on Amazon Prime, directed by the Emmy Award-winning producer and filmmaker John Forsen and narrated by Audra McDonald. It was at Teave’s island school that the Seattle-based musician, rare string instrument collector and arts patron David Fulton had a chance encounter with her as part of a world cruise with his wife in the spring of 2018.

“After we had visited the moai” — the monolithic statues of revered ancestors that symbolize Rapa Nui — “we were taken to the school to hear a performance,” Fulton said. “The kids had flowers in their hair and used the back porch of the school as a stage.”

Then Teave began playing on a wobbly upright piano. “It was so moving and unexpected, even surreal,” Fulton said. “She played a serious program. I thought: This is not a good pianist; this is one of the world’s greatest pianists.”

Fulton was shocked to discover that Teave had never released a recording. He invited her to Seattle to put down some of her favorite repertoire at Benaroya Hall, engaging the Grammy Award-winning engineer Dmitriy Lipay, who works with the Seattle Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Lipay recalls that he was concerned about whether there would be sufficient studio time for the challenging program Teave had conceived — Bach, Liszt, Handel, Scriabin, Chopin and Rachmaninoff — with a musician who had never before recorded in the studio. “With Mahani we were in for a big surprise,” he said. “The recording process with her was very similar to the golden years, when artists were willing and able to give a complete performance in one take.”

Forsen, with whom Fulton had collaborated on four previous films, was asked to tape the recording sessions. As they learned more of Teave’s story, they realized it merited a full documentary.

The pianist Mahani Teave playing on Rapa Nui, known as Easter Island, in 2018.

Teave’s first exposure to the classical repertory came from an itinerant ballet teacher, and for years her favorite work was “The Nutcracker,” which she listened to incessantly on a cassette, practicing her steps at home.

“There were no classical radio stations on the island when I was a little girl,” she said. “Nobody even knew about classical music, except for tidbits they might catch from some movie.”

When a retired violinist later settled temporarily on the island, bringing along a piano, Teave became fascinated by the instrument and persuaded the woman to give her lessons. Teave also wrote to the Chilean pianist Roberto Bravo, pleading with him to visit Rapa Nui. He did, and invited her to make her public debut; she was 9. On his advice, Teave’s mother, an American who had settled on the island and married a native of Rapa Nui, took her daughter to Valdivia, in the south of Chile, to study at the conservatory.

She went on to teachers in Cleveland and Berlin, a city where she felt especially at home and which became her base for almost four years.

“There’s a respect there for history, for lessons learned, that’s very much like being on the island,” she said.

Her decision to return to Rapa Nui after launching a potentially stellar career was part of a slow process. Teave said she felt she had devoted “the right amount of time” to each stage of her formation up to that point — “like a musical phrasing.”

“A little door opened and I decided to go through it because nobody else will,” she added. “I realized we need a school, and I am the tool of this universe to do what has to be done at this moment.”

Rather than press on with a career of incessant touring, Teave returned to Rapa Nui and established the first music school on the small island nearly a decade ago.Credit...via Mahani Teave

With Enrique Icka, a construction engineer with a parallel career performing traditional music who sings on one of the album’s tracks, Teave founded a school for music and the arts. They named it Toki, the Rapa Nui word for “tool” — the same word that denotes the objects used to carve the mysterious moai statues.

“It’s a very symbolic word,” she said, “because we believe the present carves the future.”

That vision extends to social concerns and the environment. Toki is self-sustainable, using rainwater collectors and solar panels. The building was constructed from recycled tires and the glass and plastic bottles left behind by hordes of tourists. Teave conceives of it as a kind of reversal of the traditional pattern of colonialist exploitation. She believes the school — and Rapa Nui, which has already been hit by the effects of climate change — can be a model for the outside world, showing the urgency of taking action on environmental issues.

Normally about 100 students, from 2-year-olds to teenagers, study each year, enrolled in classes in both traditional Polynesian and Western classical music that meet after regular school hours. The classes were free until 2018, funded mostly through philanthropy, with supplements from Chilean government grants; the Fundación Mar Adentro; and the island’s cultural corporation. During the pandemic, the student body has dwindled to 60. Rapa Nui has been especially hard hit because of its reliance on tourism — the chief engine, along with farming, of the island’s economy. But even before 2020, a general lack of opportunities has led to high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and domestic violence.

“If the children want to be musicians, they get the possibility to study here and later continue off the island when they are old enough,” she said. “But the others who will not pursue music as a career learn values that come just with learning an instrument. I see it as a tremendously necessary element, especially in a community which is as vulnerable as ours.”

Given the ills that historically have come from the West, did people on the island greet Teave’s interest with suspicion? “Quite the opposite,” she said. “Because of the history, everything which is brought in from outside is always looked on with great skepticism. But when it’s born from the community, it’s accepted wholeheartedly. I performed two concerts before we ever started the school, and the people were moved and so grateful.”

Teave said she would like to travel a bit more to concertize. But whenever she leaves the island, Rapa Nui remains a part of her music.

“All of these experiences are in my playing and the pieces that have accompanied my life,” she said. “Always.”

CBS NEWS April 18, 2021, 9:39 AM Building Easter Island's first music school

Concert pianist Mahani Teave has traveled the world, But Rapa Nui, sometimes known as Easter Island, is her home.

"Rapa Nui – that's what we call ourselves here also," she said. "That's our people, the Rapa Nui people."

It's a triangle-shaped island about the size of Washington, D.C., way out in the South Pacific. And it's best known for the 13-foot statues called Moai. Scholars think they were built to honor the island's elders.

"Our ancestors were all voyagers," Teave told correspondent Kelefa Sanneh, "and maybe that's what's in my blood, too, this coming and going."

In the 1700s, Dutch explorers came to Rapa Nui. They landed on Easter, so they called it Easter Island.

In the late 19th century, slave raiders from Peru abducted about half the island's population, and left behind smallpox, which killed many of the remaining islanders. Only 111 Rapa Nui survived.

The Moai of Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. CBS NEWS "We're talking about a place that's only been inhabited by humans for maybe 1,000 years?" Sanneh said. "That is true, right, but a lot has happened," said Miki Makihara, a linguistic anthropologist at Queens College in New York, who has been studying Rapa Nui culture for 30 years. "It's a remarkable history of survival and reconstruction."

Sanneh said, "Those 111 people kept the language alive, and transmitted it to the next generation – it's a comeback story."

"Yes!" Makihara laughed.

Nowadays, Rapa Nui is part of Chile, which is the closest mainland – 2,000 miles away. And Teave is a descendant of those 111.

Teave was born in Hawaii to an American mother. But her father is from Rapa Nui, and she spent most of her childhood there: "I feel, like, so strongly about the island, and here are my roots. This is where I learned all my first everything."

She still remembers the day she heard that someone had brought something new onto the island: a piano. "'We gotta go see that piano! Let's go see!' So, we get to the lady's house. And she opens the door. 'Please, can I go touch your piano?' And I don't think she even got a chance to answer. And then after that, I was like, 'Please, please, I want piano lessons.'"

There were no piano teachers on the island, so Teave asked the woman who owned the piano to give her lessons.

"She got a piece of paper out, she drew some lines: 'These are the notes. Go home and learn them,'" Teave laughed. "I memorized what each little thing on each little line and space meant. And after a few days, she said, 'You know what? You can start coming to practice at my house.'"

In 1992, Teave's family moved to Chile, where she could study at a conservatory. She was nine.

Mahani Teave became enamored with the first piano on the island of Rapa Nui. She would go on to a career as an internationally recognized concert pianist. CBS NEWS Sanneh asked, "Was that a scary time for you?"

"It was just a very confusing time. And at the same time, there's this possibility to be able to continue with, you know, wonderful music."

When she was 19, she left Chile to continue her studies, first in Cleveland, then Berlin. Soon, she was a celebrated concert pianist.

"I would feel soaked with so many wonderful things, you know, going to amazing concerts and interacting with incredible musicians," Teave said.

Sanneh asked, "Did you always know you wanted to come back to Rapa Nui at some point?"

"Well, I always felt the connection to the island. And what about the children? They don't have any chance in society, and who's ever gonna do anything about it?"

Teave returned to Rapa Nui a decade ago, and in 2014 she built the island's first music school. Last year, it was featured in the documentary, "Song of Rapa Nui." "We wanted to make an inspiring place, like, a message of hope," she said.

Internationally acclaimed concert pianist Mahani Teave, who grew up on the island of Rapa Nui, returned and founded the Rapa Nui School of Music and the Arts. CBS NEWS The school was constructed using an abundant un-natural resource: trash. "We are in a garbage vortex, so garbage from all over the world comes through the currents of the Pacific," Teave said.

This school, built from garbage, is all about transformation.

Sanneh asked, "Are you hoping to find the next great concert pianist on Rapa Nui?"

Pianist Mahani Teave. CBS NEWS She replied, "The children have the possibility to develop their talent. I really think it's important that they cultivate the values, the virtues that are learned when you learn an instrument. You learn perseverance, you learn about teamwork, respect."

Before the pandemic, some people on Rapa Nui were concerned that tourism was damaging the island. Now, Mahani Teave says she's optimistic about the day when visitors can come back: "It's something that needs to find a harmony, because the way it was happening was not harmonious, either to the island, to the people, to the nature. Give them an actual experience of what it really is to be here."

"And maybe a concert?" Sanneh asked.

"Maybe a concert. But we need a concert piano!" Teave said.

"This is a request from Rapa Nui – less garbage, more grand pianos!"

"Exactly! More grand pianos!"

Story produced by Mary Raffalli. Editor: Joseph Frandino. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rapa-nui-first-music-school-on-easter-island/

Interview with Christiane Amanpour

WATCH FULL VIDEO AS LINKED BY CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/i/status/1375547235593818115

On A Remote Island, A Music School Flourishes Pianist Mahani Teave returned home to Easter Island to teach children

March 9, 2021 Tom Huizenga Credit: Fidget and Rushmore Films

As pianist Mahani Teave was poised to launch her international career, she remembered the moment when the first piano arrived on her remote island. It was 1992, she was nine years old and the instrument landed on Rapa Nui, or Easter Island as it was named by Europeans. Best known for its mysterious, sentinel-like stone statues, the island lies some 2000 miles off the coast of Chile.

"I had to go, break all the rules, and just go straight to this lady's house and see this piano," Teave told filmmaker John Forsen, who directed Song of Rapa Nui, a new documentary about the pianist and her mercurial career. Teave took her first lessons on that piano. They cemented her love for the instrument and inspired the young musician to eventually leave her island home for years of study and dreams of becoming a star soloist. Her debut album was released earlier this year.

Teave's departure for the mainland, just a few months after those lessons, came at the suggestion of Roberto Bravo, a well-known pianist from Chile who visited the island and heard her play. Still just nine years old, she enrolled in the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia.

As a teenager, awards began to roll in, including a first place finish at the Claudio Arrau Piano Competition. After nine years, Teave left Valdivia with the intent to study in Europe, but a stop off in the U.S. turned into a six-year stint, studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a pupil of pianist Sergei Babayan. From there she was off to Berlin to build her performing career under the wing of Fabio Bidini.

"The future of Mahani is only in her hands," Bidini says in the documentary. "She's a wonderful package – musically, as a person, the charisma that she has in public, the luminosity and the power of concentration that she has in public is absolutely first class."

But after four years in Berlin, Teave began feel the island tugging on her heart and her head. She began to think of giving up a promising career that was barely off the ground.

"I could have stayed there perfectly and would have also been very happy," Teave says. "But there was this umbilical cord connecting me to the island and saying, 'Mahani, you had all these opportunities. There are lots of other children who are waiting to have them too, and you only can do this.'"

The memories of her youthful hunger to learn music haunted her. She recalled the pain felt when good teachers appeared on the island, then suddenly left. "It would get cut off and cut off and it was breaking children's dreams over and over again," she says.

Teave felt an urge to change her homeland. She moved back to Chile first because, once again, the island lacked a single piano. After a three-year struggle with funding and logistics, a pair of upright pianos were dismantled and flown to Rapa Nui in 2011. With instruments in hand, Teave's dream of building a free music school for kids was beginning to take shape.

Mahani Teave teaches a student at her Toki School of Music on Easter Island. Fidget and Rushmore Films/Courtesy of the artist

With donated land, instruments and crowd-sourced funding, Teave, along with her partner Enrique Icka, a construction engineer, broke ground on their Toki School of Music in 2014. From the start, they envisioned a sustainable, yet stylish building – "an earth ship in the shape of an eight-petaled flower."

Eighty volunteers from around the world came to help build the structure. Materials were right at their fingertips. Rapa Nui, as it turns out, sits in a part of the Pacific Ocean that naturally traps garbage from thousands of miles. The school is partly constructed from over 2,500 tires and 60,000 cans and bottles. Solar panels soak up energy on the roof, while cisterns collect rain water and the surrounding gardens provide food.

In 2016, the Toki School of Music officially opened. The island's children learn more than just Mozart and Beethoven. Teave includes her island's traditional music and dance in the curriculum.

"I find great joy when I see the children learning and sharing amongst each other," she says. "And when I think of this space, it's a space we would have liked to have had as children to study. How many kids will remember this as a highlight of their youth, and maybe they'll continue on."

Teave, at age 37, may have given up a successful career as a concert pianist, but through her hard won ambition she gained something more — the satisfaction of supporting the dreams of children, hungry to learn music.

Rapa Nui belongs to Chile the way Hawaii belongs to the United States. Since European explorers first set foot there on Easter Day 299 years ago, the lonely speck of rock—“Easter Island”—has haunted the world’s dreams as the realm of the moai, guardian spirits in stone, monumentally arrayed along the shore, their backs to the Pacific. Growing up in their shadow, a nine-year-old named Mahani Teave fell under the spell of an object scarcely less numinous: Rapa Nui’s very first piano, a humble upright. The visitor from abroad who had shipped it over had scarcely moved in when little Mahani appeared at her door, not to be turned away. Thus her studies began. Who could have guessed that in time this child of the island—born to an American mother and a local father—would emerge as an international concert pianist? Lang Lang, her rock-star colleague from the backwater of Shenyang, likes to quote a Chinese proverb to the effect that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In the end, every career is a moonshot. It wasn’t long before Teave’s mother whisked her to Valdivia, in southern Chile, for more professional instruction. In her late teens, Teave began graduate work at the Cleveland Institute of Music, followed six years later by three years at the no less prestigious Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, in Berlin. Still in her 20s, Teave had begun to make her mark in selective competitions and on the concert circuit. Yet Rapa Nui was calling her back. “There was this umbilical cord connecting me to the island,” Teave recalls. “‘Honey,’ it was saying, ‘you’ve had all these opportunities. There are lots of other children back home waiting to have them, too. Only you can do this.’”

Making music: Teave leads a group of young musicians, Rapa Nui. Directed by John Forsen with narration by Audra McDonald, the new documentary Song of Rapa Nui fills in colorful details of Teave’s formative years. In addition, it chronicles the construction of her school—a facility of airy Mediterranean grace built from six years’ worth of flat tires, tin cans, and empty bottles set into the walls like chunks of stained glass. Of course, it took a village. In addition to Teave, the NGO Toki Rapa Nui’s Web site lists eight co-founders, among them a construction engineer, an obstetrician, a lawyer, and an architect, all of whom also sing, write songs, or dance. The curriculum includes individual lessons in piano, violin, and cello, as well as classes in music appreciation and traditional arts. There’s even a farm modeling sustainability and food sovereignty, critical values for an island too long dependent on air shipments of all essentials—and critical likewise for Spaceship Earth. Teave’s burgeoning responsibilities have not eclipsed her love for the piano or performance. In other news, the pianist has just released her first CD, a recital ranging from Baroque selections of Bach and Handel to the virtuoso fare of Chopin, Liszt, and Scriabin. It closes with an island song, first chanted in the traditional manner, then elaborated on the keyboard.

On Zoom, Teave reflected on her personal history, her musical passions, and the challenges for her island and her school.

MATTHEW GUREWITSCH: You can remember when there wasn’t a single piano on Rapa Nui. And you can remember when there was just one. How many are there today? MAHANI TEAVE: At the school we have nine pianos and five electric keyboards. And there are others in private homes. M.G.: Who tunes them? M.T.: Before the pandemic, we would fly technicians in from Santiago, five hours away. That’s not possible now. But one of the teachers has learned how and is doing well. She has a great ear. M.G.: How hard is the island climate on a piano? M.T.: Not as bad as I expected. Our school is away from the ocean, so that helps. To help with the humidity, we put little cups in the instruments and fill them with salt. M.G.: Once that first piano showed up on Rapa Nui, your life changed fast, didn’t it? M.T.: Yes. I had my first lesson in April 1992. That Christmas, my mother flew me to Valdivia, in southern Chile, so I could study more seriously. M.G.: By this time, you were already playing Mozart’s Sonata No. 16 in C major and Beethoven’s Für Elise. M.T.: My teacher on Rapa Nui, Erica Putney, was really a violinist, not a pianist. She hadn’t come to Rapa Nui to teach, and she didn’t have lesson books. So she just started me out with the easiest pieces she had. M.G.: People always say that you can’t go home again. Yet after nearly 20 years on three different continents, you resettled in Rapa Nui. What’s the longest you had been away? M.T.: No matter where you start from, it’s a very long trip. I think the longest I was ever away was five years. “There was this umbilical cord connecting me to the island.” M.G.: I wonder if you’re one of the musicians who figured out that some of the more brutal realities of the industry just were not for them. The competition culture, for instance. What was that like for you? M.T.: There are some very positive aspects to competitions. They force you to push yourself to your limits and even further. They can open many doors. But I could never make peace with the idea that people are always comparing us. When I got first place, I felt sad for the other players. And when I didn’t get first place, I would wonder why. What was missing? As an artist, you have to have something to say—and also to communicate humility. It’s not about us being rock stars. M.G.: How about touring? M.T.: When you go from the airport to the hotel to the concert hall and back to the airport, it’s very intense. It’s wonderful to play at beautiful concert halls, with their magnificent instruments and amazing acoustics—but also to take the music to more unconventional places. I’ve played in Antarctica. I’ve done outreach concerts, playing Bach in a favela for people who never saw a piano before, and they’ve listened with the greatest respect and concentration. I’ve performed in prisons. You meet incredible people. If you don’t get to see the sights, you might have a late dinner at a restaurant that specializes in wonderful cuisine you’ve never had before. I appreciated those things. But always, the great reward is the music—music so sublime that it lifts your spirits beyond the difficulties. M.G.: And yet, you walked away just as all the training was really beginning to pay off. M.T.: It wasn’t so much that I walked away. It was more of a segue. As the school grew, the work became more time-consuming, especially the fundraising and the administrative things, which are not my favorite part, but there’s no one else to do it. And then I got married and had my daughter. So, I can’t be touring all the time, no. But that’s not to say I can never travel.

As an artist, you have to have something to say—and also to communicate humility. It’s not about us being rock stars. M.G.: From Song of Rapa Nui, it’s clear that Sergei Babayan has been a huge inspiration. You went to Cleveland for a masterclass with him and stayed for six years. Apart from him and Fabio Bidini, your professor in Berlin, do you have other artistic heroes and role models? M.T.: Absolutely! Starting with Martha Argerich, a phenomenal musician! I got to hear her in Berlin with the cellist Mischa Maisky. But my greatest inspiration comes from the older artists: Josef Hofmann, Ignaz Friedman, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels… And it’s not just pianists. Today, on my half-hour radio show, I played David Oistrakh in movements from the Brahms and Tchaikovsky violin concertos. I squeeze in as much music as I can so people get to know classical music and to like it. Another hero of mine is Jascha Heifetz. What he does with his violin in the second movement of the Korngold concerto—I cannot believe such beauty. Among living artists I’m absolutely blown away by the countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. It would be a dream to do with the piano what he does with his voice. M.G.: I think about you and I think about Lang Lang, two kids from the ends of the earth who dreamed of making a life as pianists. You’ve both made the dream come true, and you’re both dedicated to giving back, he with his foundation, you with your school. M.T.: The choices we make, the roads we take, are unique to each person. I think we all want our world to be a better place, but sometimes we don’t know how to make that happen. Lang Lang has so many doors open and can do incredible projects because he has those horizons. I was well known in Chile, and that opened many doors, so I could help others. But regardless of where we are in our life—fame-wise, money-wise, age-wise—it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to be famous to do something, you have to want to do something. You can change a person’s life by a gesture.

Song of Rapa Nui is available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Mahani Teave: Rapa Nui Odyssey: Piano Recital is available to purchase on Amazon Matthew Gurewitsch writes about opera and classical music for AIR MAIL. He lives in Hawaii Photo: Gentileza Grupo Copesa (portrait)

Mahani Teave: “Yo tomé un rumbo distinto, nunca quise la vida de un concertista”

Andrés Gómez 6 mar 2021

A los 38 años, la virtuosa pianista de Rapa Nui grabó su primer disco, gracias al apoyo de un magnate americano. Los ingresos del álbum van en beneficio de Toki Rapa Nui, la escuela de música para niños que fundó en la isla y por la cual abandonó su promisoria carrera en Europa. Amazon Prime estrena un documental sobre su historia.

Cuando dejó de tocar, el público estaba emocionado. Mahani Teave recibía a una delegación de pasajeros del Crystal Cruiser en su escuela. Levantada sobre una colina de tierra rojiza que mira al océano, Toki Rapa Nui es una academia que ofrece clases de piano, violín, cello y de instrumentos tradicionales, como el ukelele. Edificada con materiales de reciclaje, cuenta con salas de ensayo, estudio y auditorio, y en su exterior crece un huerto ecológico. Aquella tarde de marzo de 2018 los niños ofrecieron una pequeña presentación, y luego la directora tocó composiciones de Bach y Liszt. Entre el público se encontraba el empresario y coleccionista de Stradivarius David Fulton: “Esa actuación fue el punto culminante absoluto de todo el crucero mundial de cuatro meses para nosotros”, diría.

Exviolinista de la Sinfónica de la Universidad de Chicago y dueño de una valiosa colección de violines antiguos, Fulton se acercó a Mahani Teave tras su tocata. Quería llevarse un disco. Amablemente, ella le explicó que no contaba con grabaciones. A esa fecha la pianista, ganadora del Concurso Internacional Claudio Arrau, premiada por el Instituto de Música de Cleveland, nunca había entrado a un estudio de grabación.

Poco después, Fulton le envió un e-mail. “Fue bien conmovedor todo lo que me decía, cómo había quedado impresionado con la escuela, con mi interpretación, y sus ganas de ayudar”, recuerda la pianista desde la isla.

Con gran cultura musical, Fulton reconoció que se encontraba ante una pianista de élite, y se sensibilizó ante su historia: tras estudiar en Cleveland y en la Academia de Música Hans Eisler en Berlín, y cuando comenzaba su trayectoria de concertista, decidió dejar Europa y regresar a Hanga Roa. Quería cumplir un sueño: levantar una escuela de música para que los niños rapa nui no tuvieran que viajar al continente, como hizo ella cuando tenía nueve años.

El coleccionista americano la invitó a grabar un disco en Seattle en beneficio de la escuela. Mahani Teave viajó con su familia y grabó con el ingeniero Dmitriy Lipay, quien suele trabajar con la Filarmónica de Los Ángeles. La pianista escogió un repertorio con obras de Bach, Haendel, Chopin, Liszt y Rachmaninov. “Como nunca había grabado, estaba nerviosa, pero no me imaginaba sentarme y hacer toma tras toma tras toma, porque eso me parecía una tortura china”, cuenta. “Así que decidí hacerlo lo mejor posible en una o dos tomas y que fuera lo más fidedigno a una interpretación en vivo, obviamente con todas las ventajas de la grabación en estudio y con un ingeniero topísimo”.

Reservaron tres días de estudio y solo necesitaron dos. Hace un par de semanas, la grabación salió a la venta en un disco doble editado por el sello Rubicon Classics, con el título Odyssey Rapa Nui. Paralelamente, el director John Forsen realizó el documental Song of Rapa Nui, que aborda la historia de la pianista y puede verse en Amazon Prime.

“Yo le había hecho el quite a grabar un CD, no sentía deseos de hacerlo, pero cuando esto surgió, fue el momento preciso: tengo las obras que quiero grabar, y hacerlo en las condiciones óptimas, con un ingeniero excepcional, fue una bendición”.

En 2018 Mahani Teave fue invitada al ciclo Grandes Pianistas del Teatro Municipal. En la sala más importante del país probó el repertorio que grabaría en su primer disco. Pero entonces recibió críticas poco elogiosas. De cierto modo, el disco está borrando ese recuerdo: la revista Classic Music de la BBC la cubrió de aplausos y describió el álbum como “un arte sincero, puro y magnífico”.

¿Esperaba una recepción así? No. Yo pensaba hacer el CD en beneficio de la escuela, pero no me imaginé todo esto... Yo tomé un rumbo distinto, no voy a compararme con los grandes pianistas a quienes admiro. El tipo de vida de un concertista que día por medio está en una ciudad diferente no es algo que yo quiero y nunca lo he buscado, pero sí poder entregar la música a la gente. Lo que yo tengo que decir es para quienes quieran oírlo y lo entrego con todo mi corazón y con la sinceridad de mis sentimientos.

¿Nunca se proyectó como concertista? Siempre tuve conciertos. En los años en Berlín tuve giras, pero el estilo de vida de estar haciendo 300 conciertos al año no es algo que quise. Sí dar conciertos, pero en una medida amigable con mi ritmo de vida. A mí me gusta vivir con las obras musicales, para mí no se trata de sacar una obra del bolsillo y tocarla. El proceso de vivir con las obras varias semanas o meses es algo que da profundo sentido a mi vida y a mis conciertos. Yo necesito vivir con las obras un tiempo. No me gustaría tener que tocar un programa distinto cada semana; para entrar en la profundidad de la obra necesito tiempo. Cuando pase la pandemia, espero retomar, pero en su justa medida. Y también respetando la vida: yo tengo a mi hija, que es lo más importante, y la escuela, a la que quiero dedicarle tiempo. Esto lo conversamos con David Fulton y él me decía “yo me maravillo de tu elección, porque lo más natural y fácil sería seguir con el ritmo de conciertos...”. El que está tocando día por medio también sacrifica la vida familiar, sacrifica muchas cosas.

¿Siempre quiso volver a Rapa Nui? Desde el primer día que me fui, siempre añoré la isla. Siempre estuve muy unida a esta tierra, y acá estoy tranquila, contenta, y ahora que tenemos aviones, celulares, es todo tan fácil. Ahora no cuesta nada viajar a Europa.

¿No extraña la vida más cosmopolita? Extraño ciertas cosas de Europa y Estados Unidos, por ejemplo tener acceso a conciertos, museos, exposiciones. Berlín me encantó. Pero acá también tengo cosas maravillosas, puedo bañarme en el mar, vivo rodeada de naturaleza, tengo una tranquilidad que no tiene precio.

Presente amoroso El primer día que salió de Rapa Nui fue en la Navidad de 1992. Tenía nueve años, y llevaba seis meses practicando piano. Pero su profesora, una violinista yugoslava y dueña del único piano de la isla, se marchaba. Por entonces, Roberto Bravo ofreció un concierto en Hanga Roa, escuchó a Mahani y le sugirió seguir estudios en el continente. El músico la recomendó con la pianista Ximena Cabello, del Conservatorio de la Universidad Austral. Dos décadas después, Ximena Cabello se convertía en maestra de piano de Toki Rapa Nui. “Ella y su marido fueron pilares de la escuela”, cuenta hoy. Fundada en 2013, Toki nació con la idea de ofrecer clases gratuitas, pero tras siete años ese propósito se hizo inviable. Con el respaldo de Fundación Maradentro, la escuela recibe aportes de los padres y autogestiona recursos públicos y privados.

Niños de la escuela Toki Rapa Nui, dirigida por Mahani Teave.

La pandemia alejó el turismo de la isla y afectó los ingresos de la escuela. Entonces recibieron apoyo del programa Global Leaders, quienes lanzaron un crowfunding que les proporcionó recursos.

En lengua rapa nui, Toki designa “a la herramienta con que se construyó todo en la isla, y nosotros somos el Toki para construir un futuro mejor para nuestros hijos y un presente más amoroso”, dice.

Nacida en Hawái en 1983 de madre norteamericana, su padre fue un músico tradicional en la isla. En algún momento ella se planteó la pregunta respecto de su identidad y del arte que practica como herencia europea.

“Lo he pensado muchísimo a lo largo de los años y siento que en la isla tenemos una gran variedad de influencias. Por ejemplo, parte de nuestra música tradicional incluye la guitarra, un instrumento que no es rapa nui y ni siquiera polinésico. El acordeón: el tango rapa nui se baila con un toque propio. En la última audición llegaron casi 50 niños que quieren aprender estos instrumentos, y acá hacemos un esfuerzo por mantener nuestras tradiciones. Las clases del área tradicional son muy importantes. Tuvimos que pararlas en diciembre, cuando se nos cayeron los financiamientos, pero estamos haciendo lo posible para retomar esa área. Yo soy feliz de tocar música clásica, porque mi don es para eso, y estoy tratando de ver la posibilidad de hacer arreglos en rapa nui”, cuenta.

La escuela de música Toki Rapa Nui fue construida con materiales de reciclaje: piedras, cartón, miles de neumáticos, latas y botellas.

Casada con el ingeniero y músico Enrique Icka, Mahani Teave cree en el poder transformador de la música y en su valor para enfrentar problemas sociales que afectan a la isla, como el alcoholismo. “Aprender un instrumento aleja a los niños y jóvenes de los vicios, les enseña disciplina, tolerancia, tienen logros y eso los motiva. La orquesta les enseña el trabajo en equipo, la colaboración, el respeto, el oírse unos a otros. En un momento en que dirigí la orquesta, había una violinista que era el primer violín y daba la entrada a los demás; yo veía a los otros muchachos y pensaba que ellos van a poder respetar a una mujer, porque aquí en la orquesta lo están haciendo, oyendo su indicación de entrar, sus matices, sus tiempos”.

¿Cómo es el problema de género en la isla? Es un tema muy importante acá. Hay altísimos niveles de violencia intrafamiliar o de género. Y es algo que se está trabajando como comunidad, muy a conciencia. Hay artículos que se están analizando para poder entender los posibles cambios que se podrían hacer y de alguna manera tratar de que haya mayor igualdad y también más justicia.

¿Espera que la escuela sea un semillero de futuros músicos? Nos gustaría que la escuela fuera un semillero de músicos, pero sobre todo el semillero de personas con una base valórica muy fuerte.

Occasionally a recording appears with a backstory so extraordinary that its intrinsic musical merit risks being overshadowed. The 1946 Columbia release of Chopin played by Maryla Jonas, a Polish war refugee who had been ‘rediscovered’ by Arthur Rubinstein in Brazil a year earlier, is one example. The sensational 1977 International Piano Archives recording of the 75- year-old Ervin Nyiregyházi playing Liszt is another. The story behind ‘Rapa Nui Odyssey’, a recital by pianist Mahani Teave, is no less surprising.

In spring 2018 David Fulton, a former software designer and Microsoft executive, who now collects instruments and produces films in Seattle, visited Rapa Nui with his wife. Like all tourists, Fulton writes in his introduction, they had come to marvel at the giant moai sculptures and enjoy the beauty of the island and its native culture. Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, one of the most remote inhabited islands on earth, is a special territory of Chile, with a 2017 population of fewer than 8000 people. On a side-trip, the Fultons were taken to a music school near Hanga Roa, far south on the island’s western coast, where they were charmed by the performances of the young students. But charm turned to astonishment when Teave seated herself at an old battered upright and began to play. On the basis of this performance the Fultons invited Teave, her husband and young daughter to visit them in Seattle and there to make a recording. ‘Rapa Nui Odyssey’ is the result.

Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, not perhaps the latest word in Baroque stylishness, is nevertheless a model of clarity, beautifully paced and deeply felt. The Liszt B minor Ballade has characteristic breadth and grandeur, moving easily between contrasted poles of heroic rhetoric and caressing lyricism, its taut narrative moving inexorably towards its triumphant denouement. The same feel for Liszt’s characteristic rhetoric permeates the more familiar ‘Vallée d’Obermann’, the spirit of which Teave enters into wholeheartedly but without histrionics or excess of any kind.

The E major Handel Suite is neatly contrasted with the Bach Fantasy and Fugue, revealing a secure grasp of the two masters’ stylistic fingerprints. Teave’s Chopin-playing inhabits a world all its own, almost painterly in its subtle colours and marked everywhere by an exquisitely poised cantabile. After a luxuriously sensual Barcarolle, the febrile desperation of the B minor Scherzo provides vividly apt contrast. A splendidly Italianate Op 9 No 1 is paired with a desolate E minor Op posth to create a sensitive diptych of genuine eloquence. Works by Rachmaninov and Scriabin bring other flavours and moods to this varied programme, which concludes with a touching encore of traditional Rapa Nui music.

As fulfilling and enriching the musical culture of Rapa Nui surely must be, one hopes that Mahani Teave will somehow find a way to share her beautifully wrought, heartfelt pianism with audiences beyond her remote island. Author: Patrick Rucker

February 25, 2021: Mahani Teave

Pianist Mahani Teave in concert Gabriel Cardona Mahani Teave grew up on the remote island of Rapa Nui... or Easter Island. As a concert pianist, her career took her all around the world, but she always felt Rapa Nui calling her name. On today's show, learn about Mahani Teave and her mission to share music with the children of her home island. Episode Playlist

Hour 1 Hour 2 Claude Debussy: Dances for Harp and String Orchestra: Movement 2 Frederic Chopin: Nocturne Op. 72 No. 1 in E minor (posthumous) Danse Profane Mahani Teave, piano Vera Badings, harp; Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Bernard Haitink, Rapa Nui Odyssey conductor Rubicon 1066 Debussy: Orchestral Music Philips 438 742 Joseph Haydn: Piano Trio No. 44 in E Major, Hob. XV/28 Johnny Gandelsman, violin; Michael Nicolas, cello; Conrad Tao, piano Gioacchino Rossini: Tancredi Overture Bay Chamber Concerts, Rockport Opera House, Rockport, ME Oregon Symphony; Carlos Kalmar, conductor Oregon Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland, OR Frederic Chopin: Barcarolle Op. 60 in F sharp Major Mahani Teave, piano Claude Debussy, arr. Sally Beamish: La Mer, Three Symphonic Sketches Rapa Nui Odyssey Boston Trio Rubicon 1066 Henry Morrison Flagler Museum, West Room, Palm Beach, FL Traditional, arr. J.M. Tobar: Ancestral Rapa Nui Song - I he a Gabriela Lena Frank: Elegia Andina (2000) Hotumatu'a in E flat Major ROCO; David Danzmayr, conductor Mahani Teave, piano; Enrique Icka, vocalist ROCO , St. John the Divine Church, Houston, TX Rapa Nui Odyssey Rubicon 1066

James Weldon Johnson and John Rosmond Johnson, arr. James Cockerham: Lift Every Voice and Sing Gateways Music Festival Orchestra; Michael Morgan, conductor Gateways Music Festival, Kodak Hall at Eastman Theater, Rochester, NY

LISTEN: Mahani Teave - full interview

Mahani Teave, the virtuoso pianist from Easter Island

Off the coast of Chile, on Easter Island, pianist Mahani Teave preferred founding a music school to an international career. A discreet artist who released, at 38, her first record.

A virtuoso from Easter Island

Once upon a time, there was a pianist who lived far, far away. Mahani Teave was born on Easter Island, or rather, as the locals call it, Rapa Nui. Because it is the Europeans who baptized it Easter Island in 1722. It is one of the most isolated places in the world, lost in the South Pacific: the nearest inhabited island is some 2000 kilometers away. Easter Island is well known for its monumental statues, the mysterious Moai: monoliths carved by the early Maori, between the 13th and 15th centuries.

An exemplary journey

And on this island, a pianist, only one to date, has become known on the international scene. In 1992, Mahani Teave was nine years old and met the Chilean pianist Roberto Bravo, who encouraged her to move to the continent to continue her musical studies. She was admitted to the Conservatory of the University of Southern Chile, won several major international competitions and then studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the United States and gave concerts in major venues.

"Toki": Rapa Nui's first music school

But, after a few years, she decided to return to her native island to create a music school: Rapa Nui's first music school. This was in 2012. The school has nine teachers and a donation has made it possible to build up a reserve of musical instruments: violins, cellos, trumpets, and, of course, pianos!

The school is called "Toki", which means "tool" in the Rapanui language, the tool used to fashion the famous Moai statues. A name loaded with symbol for the pianist, who wants to signify to each young student that he can be a toki, and can shape and build his future, a better future where music and respect for the environment - because this is also what this school, built in the middle of the green hills, promotes. All classes are free and over 120 children are now enrolled, they have individual lessons, orchestral sessions, and Rapanui traditions are important: dance, ancestral songs, body painting and the ukulele. ..

"Rapa Nui Odyssey": the first disc recorded by Mahani Teave

In 2018, David Fulton, American software magnate and rare-violin collector, came for sightseeing, during a cruise. During this tour, he discovers the Moai statues, and was invited to attend a performance at the Toki music school. He hears the students, but also Mahani. It's love at first sight, for the talent of this discreet virtuoso. David Fulton immediately launched an album project. Mahani Teave has just released his first record, “Rapa Nui Odyssey”, on the British label Rubicon Classics. And if you want to know more about this amazing artist, she and the recording of the disc inspired a documentary, "Song of Rapa Nui", which is available on Amazon Prime.

[VIDEO] MAHANI TEAVE, LA PRIMERA CHILENA EN LIDERAR RANKING BILLBOARD: "TRAJO MUCHA ALEGRÍA"

SÁBADO 3, ABRIL 2021 | 21:35 HRS

La pianista rapanui habló sobre el éxito de "Rapa Nui Odyssey" y ser la primera chilena en alcanzar el primer lugar en los charts de Billboard. También conversó sobre la escuela de música de la que participa.

WATCH HERE

02/16/2021

“Rapa Nui Odyssey”

Mahani Teave (piano)

”Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.” Victor Hugo

Determined to play the piano, Mahani Teave was without a key asset: a piano. Despite being 2,000 mile west of the Chilean coastline, the young islander was encouraged by established performer Roberto Bravo, to travel to the mainland for study for six years. Thereafter, she continued her training in the United States and Germany. But at age 30, and after the launch as a successful performer, Mlle Teave wanted to do something vastly different: return to Easter Island to establish a music school aimed at educating young children in the field of music.

Broader exposure to this lovely lady fortuitously occurred when Washingtonian visitors, Dave and Amy Fulton, were pleasantly awarded a stunning performance by Mahani Teave under the roof of Toki Rapa Nui, the music school that, fascinatingly, was made out of recycled garbage. (Yes, Mlle Teave is also an ardent environmentalist and activist!) So impressed by her virtuosity, the Fultons made arrangements for her to visit the Pacific Northwest to record this CD...this isn’t your ordinary “Piano Recital”!! Perhaps being raised on a remote island in the South Pacific brings with it a nuanced suavity. Mahani Teave’s style has a gauzy, breezy trim in the sails.

And while the Rapa Nui native conveys plenty of artistic shading, the outpourings of Classicism remain in tact. While Handel’s Suite is straightforward and academic, more interesting observations can be made about Liszt’s œuvres, particularly during the Ballade which battles between piano passages and that of the tempestuous forte clauses with an unleashing of vibrant strength. Framed by amazing impeccability, this piece seems to have more intimacy with the artist. Similarly, Vallée d’Obermann hangs on a harness of deep gravity, mottled by lighter, cooler transitions. Her interpretation demonstrates her firm control.

Inside the Prelude and Nocturne for the Left Hand Mlle Teave’s treatment of the entire opus is laced with extreme deftness, helping to congeal Scriabin’s true vexations that were rifting away in his right hand. The tempo, politely distanced, allows her performance to permeate the Russian’s mental anguish.

When turning to Chopin, the modicum of reserve reveals itself in the opening Barcarolle: the read has more roundedness, throttling back majestic apexes and even during the closing pages. The ensuing Scherzo has stronger contrasts, whereby the pianist conveys deliberate punctuations and substantive rubato in the opening section. During the middle Lulaljze Jezuniu quotation, the music gets a bit muddled with closing arguments being rather subdued.

The concluding “Rapa Nui” is a spacious set of variations based on a traditional island song, exuding gatherings of spiritual hymn. One can’t help but reflect upon Mahani Teave’s roots and look at the juxtaposition of a beautifully trained classical pianist rising above the black rock beaches with extant Moai statues watching over as protectors of one of their own.

What a splendid sendoff.

Christie Grimstad

Odyssey to Easter Island

Tuesday, February 2, 2021

Pianist-educator Mahani Teave makes first recording, with all proceeds going to her music school

With its heart-warming narrative and underlying message of hope, resilience and empathy, the story of how pianist Mahani Teave came to make her debut recording reads like a fairy tale. (Little wonder that an Emmy Award-winning producer has been inspired to make a film about it.) But behind most fairy tales are some familiar ingredients: determination, self-belief, a desire to make the world a better place – and a little bit of luck. And Mahani Teave is no exception.

Born on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the South Pacific, 2000 miles off the Chilean coast, Teave wanted to learn the piano but there were no instruments available. She eventually found a way and soon caught the attention of Chilean pianist Roberto Bravo, who advised her to study in Chile. Six years later, she continued her studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music and Berlin’s Hans Eisler Academy.

Teave began giving concerts in Europe, Asia and South America but, aged 30, she made the career-changing decision to move back home to ensure the next generation could access music more easily than she herself had been able to. In 2013, she launched a free music school, Toki Rapa Nui. Made out of reclaimed rubbish – tin cans, bottles and Pacific Ocean plastic – the school is situated at the end of a long dirt road dappled with farms and is equipped with only the most basic facilities. Yet it is providing the island’s children with an extraordinary opportunity to receive music education.

In 2018, David Fulton – the Seattle-based software magnate and collector of rare violins – visited the island on a cruise, and an organised outing to Toki Rapa Nui was on the itinerary. When he arrived, he found a unique building, enthusiastic music students dressed with flowers in their hair, and the school’s founder playing on an old upright piano. ‘I could not have been more astonished if Horowitz or Rubinstein had stepped onstage,’ Fulton recalled.

Discovering that she had never made a recording, Fulton arranged for her to travel to Seattle to make an album, the proceeds of which will go directly to her school. The result is ‘Rapa Nui Odyssey’, a recital of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, Handel’s Suite No 5 in E minor, Chopin’s Scherzo No 1 in B minor and Barcarolle, Liszt’s Ballade No 2 and Vallée d’Obermann, and some smaller pieces by Rachmaninov, Scriabin and Chopin. A traditional Rapa Nui song is also included.

The recording has just been released on Rubicon Classics and is available through the label’s website or via all the main digital download platforms. John Forsen’s film is available on Amazon Prime – you can watch the trailer below.

24Horas ESPECTÁCULOS Y CULTURA Pianista Mahani Teave: la primera chilena en alcanzar el número 1 en el ranking Billboard

Mahani Teave, la pianista originaria de Rapa Nui, rompe récords en la música. Lanzó su disco debut, "Odisea en Rapa Nui", y ya figura en el número 1 de la lista Billboard para música clásica, convirtiéndose en la primera chilena en alcanzar lo más alto de este famoso ranking.

WATCH VIDEO FEATURE HERE Mahani Teave, pianista de Rapa Nui número 1 en el ranking Billboard: "Me siento representando siempre a toda nuestra gente"

WATCH FULL INTERVIEW HERE

Rapa Nui Odyssey JS Bach: Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue in D minor, BWV 903; Chopin: Nocturnes Nos 1 & 19, etc; Handel: Keyboard Suite, HWV 430 in E; Liszt: Ballade No. 2 in B minor; Vallée d’Obermann; plus works by Rachmaninov and Scriabin Mahani Teave (piano) Rubicon RCD1066 102:32 mins (2 discs)

‘Mahani Teave is in her late 30s, but sounds more like an artist of the 1950s/’60s, following in the footsteps of an Arrau or Nikolayeva: someone with an entirely natural feel for what the piano is all about and a personality that can meld ideally with the composers’ worlds. She has a rich, luminous tone – and just try the deep, growling opening of the Liszt Ballade No. 2 – which complements a splendid instinct for rubato, expert voicing and colouring.’

Read our full review of this recording here.

CNN en Español Camilo Egaña

WATCH HERE La escuela de música que potencia los talentos de una isla en el fin del mundo La pianista y protagonista del documental de Amazon Prime «Song of Rapa Nui», Mahani Teave, explica que la escuela que fundó en Isla de Pascua no solo busca que los niños aprendan a tocar un instrumento musical, sino que aspira a entregar las herramientas para un mundo mejor. Escucha aquí su visión de cómo mejora la vida con una buena oportunidad.

Por Camilo Egaña, CNN Publicado a las 23:07 ET (03:07 GMT) 18 marzo, 2021

WATCH HERE La destacada pianista que dejó el éxito para ser profesora en un lugar remote La activista ambiental Mahani Teave vivía en Europa y tenía un futuro como concertista de piano que decidió abandonar para volver a sus orígenes. Regresó a su isla natal para fundar la primera escuela de música de Rapa Nui o Isla de Pascua, uno de los lugares más remotos del mundo. ¿Por qué lo hizo?

Music Stories & more 1 Feb 2021 Polynesian Dreams The Chilean-American concert pianist Mahani Teave lives on Easter Island. We invite you to enjoy her debut album and accompanying video

Far out in the eastern Pacific Ocean lies a remote island best known for its giant stone statues. It is called Rapa Nui in the Polynesian language of the original inhabitants, while the first European visitors gave it the name Easter Island. The subtropical volcanic island with a population of less than 8,000 belongs to Chile and is more than five hours by plane from the state capital city of Santiago. The Chilean-American concert pianist Mahani Teave, born in 1983, is the cultural ambassador for Easter Island. As a child she discovered her great passion for classical music on the piano of a German violinist and went on to study in the south of Chile, in Cleveland, and in Berlin. Teave has since given concerts around the world, and has even played in Antarctica.

After years as a professional pianist, Teave returned to the place of her childhood, where, together with her husband – with whom she has a daughter – she discovered her second passion, and founded the first music school on Easter Island in 2016, “Toki Rapa Nui”. The combined strength of dozens of volunteers, a lot of willpower and love made this project possible, which is exemplary in Latin America and Oceania. Built from recycled material and powered by renewable energy, it houses more than 100 students who receive free lessons in the classical disciplines of violin, cello, piano, orchestra and ear training as well as in the traditional disciplines of ukulele and re'o riu. Here, the children learn not only an instrument, but also important basics of environmental protection and sustainable agriculture. The focus is on preserving their endangered language and culture, which is expressed in dance, body painting and songs, among other things.

Mahani Teave is truly living her dream and has now taken another step in her impressive career with the release of her first album, recorded in Seattle. On “Rapa Nui Odyssey”, she shows all her skills at the piano: the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue by Bach, a character piece by Liszt, a Handel suite and masterpieces by Scriabin, Chopin and Rachmaninov. And with the last piece, she’s come full circle: the ancestral song “I Hē A Hotumatu’a” is about the first king of Easter Island. In the accompanying video you can hear the traditional songs of the Rapa Nui and get an impression of the beautiful landscape of Easter Island with its coastline, mountains, palm trees, beaches and stone statues. But even more importantly: you experience Mahani Teave on her Steinway grand piano and look into the smiling faces of the students in her music school.

(Australia) The Music Show with Andrew Fordz

Image: Supplied: Mahani Teave

Easter Island's first concert pianist and music school, and a new Australian Requiem

Mahani Teave was surrounded by song and dance growing up on Rapa Nui (Easter Island). When a retired violin teacher settled there with an old upright piano, Mahani was hooked on classical music. Soon she was playing Mozart and Beethoven as a nine-year-old. She moved to mainland Chile to continue her education, then to the United States and Germany, winning competitions and awards. Mahani’s since returned to Rapa Nui to set up the music school Toki; an ‘earthship' building made partly out of tonnes of old tyres, glass bottles and cans. It’s all part of giving the next generation the opportunities she wished she'd had. Profits from Mahani’s stunning new album of Chopin, Liszt and Bach go back into the school.

More information about Toki Music School can be found here. And Mahani Teave's album Rapa Nui Odyssey is here.

When we think of Requiems, Verdi, Mozart and Fauré come to mind. New Requiems are composed relatively rarely, but now composer Paul Stanhope has joined the ranks with a work, which, like the Fauré and Britten Requiems, diverges from the standard Catholic Mass for the Dead. Paul has set poetry by Mary Elizabeth Frye, Emily Dickinson and Oodgeroo Noonuccal, continuing a long personal quest to find a genuine connection to place through music and words. Paul Stanhope’s Requiem has its world premiere this Saturday in Sydney.

Duration: 54min 7sec Broadcast: Sat 13 Mar 2021, 11:05am

16.04.2021 / 01:14

La imperdible conversación con Mahani Teave y Alejandra Urrutia, destacadas exponentes nacionales de la música Ambas artistas han alcanzado históricos logros gracias a sus brillantes carreras, y en esta instancia hablarán sobre lo que ha significado su trabajo social para potenciar el talento de los jóvenes y cómo han enfrentado su labor en época de pandemia. Un diálogo que podrá ser visto de forma gratuita a través de las plataformas digitales de CNN Chile.

Este sábado 17 de abril, la pianista Mahani Teave y el directora de orquesta Alejandra Urrutia se unirán en una conversación junto a Hansel Silva, director ejecutivo de la Corporación Aldea Rural. En la instancia, abordarán diferentes temas asociados a sus exitosas carreras, sus logros y objetivos enfocados en la sociedad.

El encuentro será transmitido a partir de las 15:00 horas mediante las plataformas de Facebook y YouTube de CNN Chile y la Corporación Aldea Rural. https://youtu.be/0U_16w0imWo https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=1515788968756694&

Según Alejandra Urrutia, directora de orquesta y del Festival y Academia Internacional de Música Portillo, “es un honor poder compartir nuevamente junto a Mahani”, ya que tiempo atrás trabajaron juntas en Rapa Nui, “ella como solista y yo como directora, cuando la Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional fue a la Isla de Pascua”.

“Fueron momentos muy hermosos para mí compartir con ella y estoy súper inspirada para nuestra conversación del sábado”, añadiendo que en ese encuentro anterior “(Mahani) me pareció una persona súper sencilla, súper humilde”, señaló Urrutia a CNN Chile.

Lee también: Conoce a Alejandra Urrutia, la primera directora de la Orquesta de Cámara del Municipal Pero no solo la música es la que las une, y sobre eso también hablarán en este conversatorio.

“Me da mucha alegría que tengamos sueños en común. Ella con su academia de música y yo con el festival, que en el fondo tiene todo que ver con darles oportunidades a los más jóvenes y transformar vidas. En ese sentido compartimos mucho esa idea y filosofía de vida de querer transformar nuestra sociedad a través de la música y tener un impacto en ella“, declaró respecto de su Festival y Academia Internacional de Música Portillo y la ONG Toki Rapa Nui impulsada por Teave. “Invito a todos a que se sumen a esta conversación que me da mucha alegría que la tengamos sobre todo en los tiempos que estamos viviendo, que a veces es tan fácil decepcionarse. Pero cuando uno trabaja al servicio del mundo, todo se mueve para que así sea y eso nos da energía para seguir creando nuevos proyectos“, concluyó Urrutia. Lee también: “Un retrato a escala humana”: Estrenan “Niño Divino”, el último documental sobre Claudio Naranjo Urrutia y Teave Urrutia actualmente es finalista del concurso Lanyi Conducting Competition 2021 (Serbia) y es parte de una serie documental de La Ventana Chile junto a Súbela Radio, Cuatro Mujeres en Sinfonía, que aborda el proceso detrás del Gran Concierto por la Hermandad realizado por primera vez en 2019.

En 2018, asumió el cargo de directora titular de la Orquesta de Cámara del Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile, haciendo historia en el país al ser la primera mujer en este cargo.

Mientras que Teave, con su primer disco doble Rapa Nui Odyssey, editado por el sello Rubicon Classics, también marcó un hito al ser la primera chilena en alcanzar el número 1 en el ránking Billboard en música clásica tradicional.

Mahani Teave es una pianista nacida en Hawai, hija de padre rapa nui y madre estadounidense, que se crió en la isla de Rapa Nui para posteriormente iniciar sus estudios en el Conservatorio de Música de la Universidad Austral de Chile (UACH). Una carrera que perfeccionó en Estados Unidos y Alemania.

Además, encabeza la ONG Toki Rapa Nui y la Escuela de Música de Isla de Pascua, que mantiene a aproximadamente 70 niños estudiando gratuitamente diferentes disciplinas ligadas a la música, ya sea piano, violín, cello o ukelele.

Un encuentro musical clave

El diálogo de este sábado, será encabezado por Hansel Silva, director ejecutivo de la Corporación Aldea Rural, quien además fue el responsable de idear este encuentro musical.

Según dijo a CNN Chile, el propósito es que ambas mujeres chilenas “nos cuenten sobre su vida, cómo lograron los estudios, becas, salir estudiar al extranjero, para después hablar de sus trabajos, inspiraciones y cómo han llevado su trabajo en la época de la pandemia“.

Lee también: 15 años de “Ahí Vamos”, el disco más escuchado de Gustavo Cerati en Spotify

“Son dos mujeres importantísimas para el país y tal vez nos ha faltado acercar estos logros a las personas que no tienen tanto acceso al mundo de las culturas y el arte”. Por lo tanto, esta oportunidad es importante para “humanizar el éxito que han tenido, permitiendo que las personas conozcan su trabajo y lo valoren más”, sentenció.

InicioAgenda culturalRapa Nui Odyssey: Mahani Teave habla de su primer disco Discos

Rapa Nui Odyssey: Mahani Teave habla de su primer disco abril 11, 2021

La pianista comenta el repertorio que grabó en su disco debut y explica por qué decidió hacerlo. También se refiere a la escuela que fundó en Rapa Nui.

INFORMACIÓN

Ver y escuchar Escuche aquí el podcast del programa Chile Clásico, de Radio Beethoven.

Vea aquí el tráiler del documental Song of Rapa Nui, de John Forsen.

El disco Rapa Nui Odyssey, de la pianista Mahani Teave, se ha convertido en un fenómeno mundial. Es publicado por Rubicon Classics y está en todas las plataformas digitales.

Mahani Teave confirma a Radio Beethoven que es el primer disco que graba con una discográfica: "Tanto me pedían antes tener un disco mío, que había hecho una compilación de algunas grabaciones de conciertos, algunas obras que tuvieron buenas condiciones de acústica, de piano, de grabación, etcétera, y eso lo compilé en un cedé que quizás algunas personas tienen, pero éste está hecho con un sello discográfico, con condicio nes para que la gente lo escuche en Chile y en China".

"Creo que la escuela en Rapa Nui no es sólo un semillero de futuros músicos, sino que, más importante aun, es un semillero de personas con valores potentes que se cultivan a través de la música", dice Mahani Teave.

Lo cierto es que la pianista rapanui había sido reacia a grabar un cedé, especialmente porque dudaba de que fuera posible capturar la experiencia de la música en vivo. Sin embargo, recibió una oferta que hizo que valiera la pena hacer la prueba. Hace dos años, el coleccionista de violines Cremonesi David Fulton quiso conocer la Escuela de Música y de las Artes de Rapa Nui, que fundó Mahani Teave. Ahí la escuchó tocar, y la convenció luego de que grabara un disco que podría potenciar justamente a la escuela.

"Cuando me lo planteó el señor Fulton, el propósito fue que este cedé se pudiera vender para recaudar fondos para la escuela de música. Los años anteriores le hice el quite a hacer un disco, pero en este momento dije 'La verdad es que ahora quiero y con este programa quiero, y por este propósito quiero'", revela Mahani Teave.

La grabación se realizó en la Benaroya Hall, en Seattle, Estados Unidos. "Como intérprete, me quedó una sensación muy grata en el proceso de la grabación porque las condiciones fueron óptimas, tenía un excelente instrumento, una excelente sala, el sonido era fantástico. El ingeniero acústico, Dmitriy Lipay, estaba con su hijo, y él había grabado a Valery Gergiev muchas veces, y además ellos son músicos, así que fue una experiencia que fluyó. No hubo que repetir 500 veces las cosas, no era algo demasiado manipulado, que es también el riesgo que se corre con los discos profesionales", detalla la pianista. Su idea era aproximarse cuando fuera posible a un recital en vivo. Por eso eligió un repertorio que ya había interpretado en vivo, como programa, en el Teatro Municipal de Santiago, y además trabajaron con tomas completas, "lo más fidedigno posible a lo que sería una interpretación en vivo".

Desde Liszt y Chopin a un canto ancestral rapanui El repertorio elegido para el disco debut de Mahani Teave incluye a dos barrocos, a través de Fantasía Cromática y Fuga de Johann Sebastian Bach y la Suite N° 5 de Giorg Friedrich Haendel. También hay dos románticos; de Fréderic Chopin, interpreta la Barcarola, el Scherzo N°1 y dos Nocturnos, y de Franz Liszt, la Balada N°2 y el Valle de Obermann. Se suman Momento Musical Op.16 de Sergei Rachmaninov, y el canto tradicional I He a Hotumatu'a.

-¿Cómo eligió el repertorio para Rapa Nui Odyssey? "Las obras que elegí son muy cercanas a mí; son como amigos de hace mucho tiempo y que me han acompañado en distintos períodos de mi vida. Quise poner en el cedé obras que ya estuvieran bien madu ras, que tuvieran un mensaje que ya fuera trabajado en el tiempo, y que se haya ido profundizando en el tiempo. Amo profundamente a todas estas obras", confiesa.

-¿Qué es lo que liga a estas obras? ¿Son contrastantes o tienen más bien elementos en común, por ejemplo, de color? "Siento que todas estas obras, el disco en sí mismo está bastante inclinado hacia el Romanticismo. Incluso las obras barrocas de Bach y Haendel. Parte con una fantasía de Bach que es tremendamente improvisatoria, con mucha libertad. Y, de hecho el Preludio con el que inicia Haendel también tiene algo improvisatorio, lo que tiene que ver también con juegos de tiempo o licencias que uno se puede tomar en los románticos. A pesar de que son de épocas muy distintas y de estilos muy distintos, las obras tienen una cohesión. Se vinculan entre sí, ya sea por relaciones de la tonalidad en la que están, o del carácter que tiene cada una, o de este toque más hacia lo romántico que de por sí une a todo esto".

-Me parece que todas las obras del disco tienen una fuerte expresividad en común. "Claro, son obras tremendamente expresivas, de mucha profundidad, bastante dramáticas. Y, bueno, está la obra también de la isla que es muy evocadora, I He a Hotumatu'a".

-¿De qué habla esta pieza tradicional? ¿Es un arreglo? "Es un canto ancestral de la isla que habla del primer rey de la isla, Hotu Matu'a, en su momento de muerte, en que él llama a los espíritus para que lo vengan a buscar. Es un arreglo de José Miguel Tobar y canta enrique Ika en el comienzo. También tiene un toque bastante romántico de alguna manera".

Impacto internacional y local de Rapa Nui Odyssey Diversas publicaciones especializadas del mundo han destacado el disco debut de Mahani Teave, y éste además alcanzó a mediados de marzo el primer lugar en el ránking Billboard, categoría de Álbum clásico tradicional.

"Estoy muy contenta con las críticas que ha recibido este trabajo; me alegra mucho que lo valoren, les guste, lo disfruten. Y bueno, esto también ayuda yo creo a que más gente lo escuche, y eso también puede de alguna manera incentivar a la venta del cedé para generar más recursos para becar a los niños en la escuela acá en la isla, entonces es algo muy positivo", comenta la pianista.

Alumnos de la escuela, en el documental Song of Rapa Nui.

"Creo que la escuela acá no es sólo un semillero de futuros músicos, sino que, más importante aun, es un semillero de personas con valores potentes que se cultivan a través de la música. A través de la escuela también se están dando estas oportunidades a los niños que antes no existían. Creo que es un aporte grande, a los niños les gusta y es algo hermoso", agrega Teave.

Ella misma fue descubierta por el pianista Roberto Bravo, quien hizo las gestiones para contactarla con la maestra Ximena Cabello, de manera que la joven intérprete pudiera formarse como pianista en la Universidad Austral de Valdivia.

Por eso mismo, para que todo niño con interés musical pueda aprender un instrumento, es que fundó la escuela, con la ONG Toki Rapa Nui. Las clases comenzaron en 2012.

Rapa Nui Odyssey se puede adquirir a través del sello Rubicon Classics, Amazon, Spotify, iTunes Music. Además, John Forsen realizó un documental sobre la intérprete rapanui y su proyecto educativo titulado Song of Rapa Nui, que está desde diciembre en Amazon Prime Video y que fue nominado a un Emmy.

"Todas las utilidades de este cedé y del documental van a ser para apoyar la escuela de música", cierra Mahani Teave.

Por Romina de la Sotta Donoso

Film chronicles pianist’s return to Rapa Nui to build a free music school MEDIA VIEW

Pianist Mahani Teave was nine years old “when the first piano arrived on her remote island … Rapa Nui, or Easter Island … 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile,” writes Tom Huizenga in Tuesday’s (3/9) National Public Radio. “ ‘I had to go … to this lady’s house and see this piano,’ Teave told filmmaker John Forsen, who directed Song of Rapa Nui, a new documentary…. Her first lessons on that piano … inspired the young musician to eventually leave her island home for years of study…. Her debut album was released earlier this year.… The memories of her youthful hunger to learn music haunted her.” When Teave moved back, “the island lacked a single piano. After a three- year struggle … a pair of upright pianos were dismantled and flown to Rapa Nui in 2011…. With donated land, instruments and crowd-sourced funding, Teave, along with her partner Enrique Icka, a construction engineer, broke ground on their [free] Toki School of Music in 2014…. In 2016, the Toki School of Music officially opened…. ‘It’s a space we would have liked to have had as children to study,’ she says.”

March 10, 2021

Daily Playlists

Mornings with Jeff Spurgeon 09:37 AM Playlist For February 18, 2021  Frederic Chopin  Barcarolle in F-sharp, Op. 60  Mahani Teave, piano  Album: Rapa Nui Odyssey

Reflections from the Keyboard 10:31 PM  George Frideric Handel Sunday March 21, 2021  Keyboard Suite No. 5 in E Major, HWV 430: IV. Air & Variations, "The Harmonious Blacksmith"  Mahani Teave, piano  Album: Rapa Nui Odyssey

Weekend Mornings with Paul 11:39 AM  Frederic Chopin Cavalconte  Barcarolle in F-sharp, Op. 60 Playlist For April 04, 2021  Mahani Teave, piano  Album: Rapa Nui Odyssey

NUESTRO BLOG

Mahani Teave se convierte en la primera chilena en liderar el ranking Billboard de música clásica ME GUSTA ESTA NOTA 30 de Marzo de 2021

Sin muchas ganas de grabar un cd, ya que no sentía deseos de hacerlo, la pianista nacional de origen pascuense Mahani Teave se aventuró a hacer su propio álbum musical con un repertorio que incluye la reinterpretación de piezas de Bach, Haendel, Chopin, Liszt y Rachmaninov.

Lo que probablemente no se imaginó, es el importante logro artístico que consiguió la semana pasada, cuando se convirtió en la primera chilena en alcanzar el número uno del ránking Billboard en música clásica gracias a la publicación de "Rapa nui Odyssey".

Así lo dio a conocer la Sociedad Chilena de Autores e Intérpretes Musicales a través de Twitter, donde aplaudieron a la exalumna del Conservatorio de Música de la Universidad Austral de Chile por liderar la lista de discos de música clásica tradicional durante la semana del 13 de marzo.

El disco que se publicó durante el 2021 bajo el sello discográfico Rubicon Classics, está compuesto de 16 piezas musicales y se encuentra disponible en Spotify.

La inesperada grabación

Como un hecho completamente fortuito, la afamada artista de 38 años, recibió en su escuela Toki Rapa Nui, donde se realizan clases de violín, cello, piano y otros instrumentos musicales a los niños y niñas de la isla, a una delegación de pasajeros del Crystal Cruiser.

Luego de la presentación de los infantes, la profesora Mahani tocó composiciones de Bach y Lizst, conquistando al público presente y llamando en particular la atención del empresario y coleccionista de Stradivarius David Fulton.

Al terminar la presentación, Fulton se acercó a la directora de la escuela y le preguntó si tenía algún disco para llevarse. Ella le manifestó que no tenía ningún álbum y que nunca había entrado a un estudio de grabación.

Poco tiempo después, el coleccionista de violines antiguos le envió un correo a Mahani. “Fue bien conmovedor todo lo que me decía, cómo había quedado impresionado con la escuela, con mi interpretación, y sus ganas de ayudar”, contó la pianista a La Tercera.

Como hombre con mucha trayectoria en el rubro de la música y un gran visionario, la invitó a grabar un disco en Seattle en beneficio de la escuela. Finalmente, Teave viajó con su familia y grabó junto al ingeniero Dmitriy Lipay, quien trabaja con la Filarmónica de Los Ángeles.

“Yo le había hecho el quite a grabar un CD, no sentía deseos de hacerlo, pero cuando esto surgió, fue el momento preciso: tengo las obras que quiero grabar, y hacerlo en las condiciones óptimas, con un ingeniero excepcional, fue una bendición”, aseguró Mahani, quien sólo necesitó dos días para registrar su obra.

Aquí te dejamos un extracto "Persona Personaje", programa que compartió con la pianista pascuense sobre su historia, motivaciones y amor por la música.

More information:

dworkincompany.com/site/artist/mahani-teave

facebook.com/mahaniteave

twitter.com/mahaniteave

instagram.com/mahaniteave

Booking and media inquiries:

Dworkin & Company Elizabeth Dworkin, [email protected] Allison Weissman, [email protected] 914-244-3803 dworkincompany.com