I expand the potential of the concert space through storytelling and mesmerizing, immersive piano performances.

Ari Livne is a classically trained pianist, actor, and versatile performer based in New York City, who loves to tell stories with and about music.

Last fall, Ari made his theater debut as pianist, music director, and moderator in Bedlam’s Women of Will at the West End Theater in New York City. He frequently works with New York’s Heartbeat Opera as repetiteur and ensemble pianist, and presents innovative recitals to audiences throughout the New York area. Performance highlights have taken him to Benaroya Hall, the Kennedy Center, Merkin Hall, and Suntory Hall.

“People forget facts but they remember stories.”

-Joseph Campbell

Ari cares deeply about creating a warm, welcoming environment for audiences. Whether his concerts center around a single composer, a theme, or a moment in history, he always provides a unifying principle that the audience can settle into. Some performances delve deeply into the repertoire of a single composer: he performed the complete Rachmaninoff Etudes Tableaux in Elebash Hall, presented a lecture-recital on the Goldberg Variations at the Bridenthal Concert Series, and is currently developing a hybrid concert and one man show that mixes Brahms’s late piano music with stories about his daily life. Others focus on new music: he has premiered new works by the composer Cyrus Von Hochstetter and performed the American premiers of works by Peter Maxwell Davies and Volodymyr Runchak, the latter at the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival in 2020.

Ari is also an avid collaborator and chamber musician. He recently completed a second tour of Japan with violinist Sho Omagari, performing in nine cities and doing outreach concerts at more than twenty schools and hospitals. He has appeared twice with the Aurea Ensemble in Providence, RI. His duo with cellist Clare Monfredo has spent two summers at the Avaloch Farm Music Institute and performed interactive recitals in New York, NY; Ellsworth, ME; Hudson, NY; and Philadelphia, PA. He also recently presented programs centered around Schoenberg’s Book of Hanging Gardens and Faure’s La chanson d’Ève with mezzo-soprano Sophie Delphis in Brooklyn, NY and Concord, NH.

Ari holds degrees from Yale University and The Juilliard School. He has studied acting with John Anthony, singing with Kayla Green, and more recently discovered the joy of clown school with Christopher Bayes.