RAPA NUI  — The Easter Island pianist who twice topped the Billboard Classical charts with her debut album, Rapa Nui Odyssey, launched her North American tour on September 9th at the Harriman Jewell series to a packed house. Hailing from the most inhabited remote island on the planet, pianist, environmentalist, educator, and cultural emissary Mahani Teave has won people’s hearts with her remarkable life story, “natural pianism [and] magnificent artistry” (BBC). Her tour takes her to New York City’s Perelman Performing Arts Center (twice, during the venue’s opening weeks), Washington’s Kennedy Center, Tri-C concerts at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, Rockport Music, Middlebury Performing Arts series, Seattle Symphony and other major stages, and extends from September 9 through November 13. Her program will include premieres by two Chilean composers commissioned especially for this tour: an arrangement of the ancestral song I hē a Hotumatu’a by José Miguel Tobar and Suite Rapa Nui by Alejandro Arevalo along with traditional works by Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Bach, and Franz Liszt.