Valentine's at Tawny!

We are so thrilled to welcome Lucy Yao (Pianist) and Jay Julio (Violin) for a romantic evening of music. Dinner is available for a separate price onsite, as well as nonalcoholic and alcoholic drinks.
Thrilled to bring lovers of classical music and contemporary alike! Looking forward to having you!

Tawny is a newly opened cafe, gallery, and bar in the LES.

BIOS:

Lucy Yao is a New York City–based collaborative pianist-composer and chamber musician. She has performed and been commissioned to compose and perform at the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, New York Philharmonic, MIT Museum of Science, and Boston’s Celebrity Series, and Joffrey Ballet.

Lucy is the co-founder of Chromic Duo, an award-winning toy piano and creative studio project that commissions and performs new works for piano and toy piano. Through this work, she collaborates closely with a wide range of artists, students, and faculty at universities to expand what it means to tell stories through toy pianos, spatialized storytelling enabled by immersive technology (AR/VR). Her performances and projects are often presented in intimate venues and nontraditional spaces, from Central Park to NYC’s Chinatown.

As an educator, Lucy has taught and facilitated workshops with the American Composers Orchestra, Purdue, and across the country to work not only with composers and performers on collaboration, interpretation, and contemporary performance practice, but with students who are interested in storytelling. While at Purdue, she led a multidisciplinary team across Psychology, UX, Computer Animations, and Music, to create a mental health wellness initiative and installation that creates a relief valve for students struggling with mental health.

She is also a Citizens University Fellow, and her artistic work is shaped by an interest in how concerts can function as civic “third spaces”—places for gathering, listening, and connection beyond institutional or commercial settings.

Across performance, creation, and education, Lucy is committed to music as a shared, social practice.

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From Uniondale, New York, first-generation Filipino-American multi-instrumentalist, composer, and writer Jay Julio (b. 1997) splits time between NYC, Philadelphia, and on tour. Jay serves as Assistant Principal Violist of the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra and has performed with the American Composers Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony, and for over a year with the Angelica touring company of Hamilton. Solo appearances include concertos with the Ocala Symphony, the Marquette Symphony, and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Jay has recorded for Parma, Nonesuch, and Broadway Records, including releases nominated for 2025 and 2026 Grammy Awards, and they have been heard on radio/TV across the US, Australia, and Europe both as musician and equity advocate.

They are a 2025 recipient of an Interdisciplinary New York State Council for the Arts grant and a 2025 YoungArts Alumni Microgrant to support the development of their original musical/literary/visual work america is in the heart, and will serve as a Tell Your Story fellow at the 2026 Spoleto Music Festival, working with members of the Charleston, SC community to devise a collaborative artistic work through the lens of local experiences.

They look forward to a renewed commitment to new music in the 2025-2026 season; highlights include shows with the BlackBox Ensemble in an all-Asian-American music program at National Sawdust, celebrating the album release of Charles Gaines’ Manifestos 6 at CAP UCLA, and regional premieres of works by James Lee III, Courtney Bryan, and themselves in a duo tour of the Midwest with pianist Josh Tatsuo Cullen.

What's the music?

Jay Julio (they/them) Violin

Lucy Yao Piano