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About the Series

The Roosevelt Island Chamber Music Society (formerly known as RIVAA Gallery Concerts) was created in January 2024 by Roosevelt Island resident Yiheng Yang, who is on faculty at The Juilliard School of Music, and a leading pianist and historical keyboard player. Yang’s vision in creating these concerts was to share world-class music-making and creative collaboration between top historical performance artists and emerging young professional musicians, bringing the best of classical period performance to Roosevelt Island and New York City. 

In the vibrant and inspiring setting of Roosevelt Island’s community art gallery RIVAA, this musical series is the only one of its kind offered to audiences in New York City with a specific emphasis on Classical and Romantic chamber repertoire played on historical instruments.

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Yiheng Yang

Series Director

Fortepianist and historical keyboardist Yi-heng Yang is recognized for her “remarkable expressivity and technique (Early Music Magazine).” Her playing has been described as “impeccable (BBC Music)” and “superbly adept (Gramophone).” Her album of Schubert lieder with fortepiano, “Where Only Stars Can Hear Us (Avie Records)” with Grammy award-winning tenor Karim Sulayman, was #1 on Classical Billboard and listed in the New York Times’ “Best Classical Music of 2020.” Her many other albums on period instruments, including a solo album “Free Spirits: early Romantic music on the Graf piano, The Complete Cellos Sonatas of Brahms with Kate Bennett Wadsworth, and Schumann Piano Trios (Trio Ilona, with Ravenna Lipchik and Kate Wadsworth) have also received wide critical acclaim. This coming Spring she will release her next album on the Deux-Elles label with period violinist Aisslinn Nosky, which will be the first recording of the Complete Fortepiano and Violin Sonatas of Jane Mary Guest, a Georgian-era composer who was a student of J.C. Bach. In recent seasons, Ms. Yang has been a featured performer with the Albany Symphony, the New York Philharmonic Chamber Music Series at Merkin, The Boston Early Music Festival, Forte/Piano Festival at Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards, with the Twelfth Night Ensemble, at the People’s Symphony Concerts, The Boston Clavichord Society, Carnegie Hall, The Phillips Collection, Columbus Early Music, and The Helicon Foundation. A devoted educator, she is a faculty member of The Juilliard School, where she teaches performance practice, chamber music, fortepiano, improvisation, and piano. A sought after guest teacher, she has given guest classes at schools such as NEC, Curtis, Mannes and Rutgers. She is artistic director of the RIVAA Gallery Concert Series, which focuses on period chamber and solo music of the classical and romantic eras. Yi-heng lives with her husband and two kids on Roosevelt Island.

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Musicians '26

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