Mahani Teave Brings Mozart with a Side of Activism

By Vanessa Ague

Mahani Teave is a pioneering pianist and conservationist from Rapa Nui, one of the most remote islands in the world. Named Easter Island by the Europeans who landed there in the 1700s, this special island territory of Chile is located about 2,000 miles off its coast in the Pacific Ocean. Despite her far-flung origins, Teave has become a world-renowned classical pianist and an environmentalist bringing awareness to climate change through her music and sustainable music school, Toki. In all her work, music is a vessel for better understanding the Earth and each other.  

“We're not just intellect, we are not just emotions, we are not just a soul,” she said in a recent phone call. “We're also a body, and we're connected to what’s around us and we are responsible for everything we do.” 

This fall, she embarks on her first U.S.-wide tour, during which she will perform at the Seattle Symphony’s Benaroya Hall for the first time. Part of the Symphony’s new Playlist Series (October 13 & 14, 2023), in which artists program uninterrupted concerts that take inspiration from a work of Mozart, Teave performs his Piano Concerto No. 20 in D minor, traditional Rapa Nui chants and new works that draw on themes of loss, joy and Earth.  

Teave first fell in love with the piano as a young child. A retired violin teacher had settled on the island and brought a piano with her. Once Teave saw it, she knew she wanted to play. She began taking lessons and learning the classical repertoire. She also connected with the Chilean pianist Roberto Bravo, who encouraged her to study at the conservatory in the south Chile city of Valdivia. She traveled there, and then moved to Cleveland and to Berlin. But she always wanted to return to Rapa Nui. 

So Teave went home, and since 2014, she has spent her time building and establishing Toki, a music school on the island that bridges her passions for music and conservation. It’s primarily built from recycled bottles and garbage that washed up on the Rapa Nui shores, serving as a model for the possibilities when music and sustainability unite. At the same time, her work as a concert pianist exploded. In 2021, she recorded her first album, Rapa Nui Odyssey, a collection of classical music and Rapa Nui ancestral chants, in Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony’s Grammy-winning recording engineer, Dmitriy Lipay. Seattle Symphony donor David Fulton, who fell in love with Teave's music while visiting Rapa Nui, helped make the project possible. The recording shot to the top of the Billboard Classical charts, spending two weeks at No. 1 and brought her work as a concert pianist back to the international stage. 

Like her passion for music, Teave’s interest in environmental activism stems from Rapa Nui. Growing up there, she developed a close relationship with the earth and the water, which rushed around the island, cloaking it in sparkling, foamy waves. In 2006, she went on an underwater tour and became enthralled with the crystalline beauty. Now, she regularly free-dives (descending deep into the ocean without any gear), scuba dives and snorkels. “I would live underwater if that were a possibility,” she laughed. 

On Rapa Nui, Teave sees climate change at work all the time. Discarded plastic and garbage from countries thousands of miles away wash up on its shores. Teave remembers walking along the beach as a kid and grabbing a fistful of sand, the feeling of coarse grains against her palms; these days, she inevitably grabs microplastics, too. The ocean surrounding the island has warmed and sea life is beginning to go extinct, especially the coral reefs that line the Pacific. “The island is a miniature example of what’s happening worldwide,” Teave said. “We see how the world is changing so fast.” 

The ocean is a central theme in Teave’s Playlist program, which features Songs from the Deep by Juhi Bansal, a work inspired by the underwater landscape. “This music reminds us that we have to take care of our oceans and what a wonderful, wondrous world it is,” Teave said. Aaron Jay Kernis’ Elegy (to those we lost), which was composed during COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns in May 2020, is a meditation, offering the audience space to come together in reflection. For Teave, this idea also relates to Earth’s devastation. “These days, we are losing so much because of the climate crisis that we are living, and we are not realizing what we are losing,” she said. “This is something that we are living right now.”  

The program also celebrates Rapa Nui culture with two new works that derive from traditional chants. I hē a Hotumatu’a tells the story of the early settlers of Rapa Nui and the passing of King Hotu Matu’a, who was the island’s first leader and has become an emblem of Rapa Nui. In those early days, he discovered ways of collecting water and using the land to help people survive, leading the people through the trials and tribulations of life on the island. This arrangement was created by a teacher at Toki, José Miguel Tobar, and builds around the original song. 

Two pieces from Suite Rapa Nui by Alejandro Arevalo, “E te ‘ua Matavai” and “Mai Hive te ‘Ariki,” present interpretations of ancestral songs. The first grows around a chant that calls the rain during a drought. The second song tells the story of King Hota Matu’a and celebrates how he made life possible on the island. Both pieces bridge the island’s history, present and spirituality. “Music is so important for us as a culture, and it's connected to that spiritual world that is so rich on the island,” Teave said. Performing these pieces on tour “is like bringing a piece of the island here.” 

Music, at its core, is a way for Teave to spark discussion, a forum by which she can speak with her audiences about the issues our Earth and society face. “Music gives us a chance to share these worries,” Teave said. “How lucky I am that we can talk about these things, and that the music unites us.” 

Mahani Teave’s performances are generously sponsored by Nader and Oraib Kabbani.