Two Aiea sisters have been selected to tickle the ivories at New York City’s storied Carnegie Hall.

Mia and Maddy Okamoto, ages 12 and 13, were selected last fall by the Elite ­International Music Competition to perform on the piano at the prestigious concert venue, which is synonymous with great musical performances and musicians. They traveled to New York this week with their parents, accompanied by their teacher, Noe Baladad, who teaches at the Masaki School of Music. The girls were scheduled to perform at the concert hall Saturday.

Mia was actually chosen to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2021, featuring a work by Japanese composer Yoshinao Nakata, but her appearance was canceled due to the pandemic. She had to audition again this year, this time performing a Chopin waltz.

“I was a little less nervous because we were supposed to record it,” said Mia, who will be attending Punahou School in the fall. “I messed it up a little bit, but since I practiced so much I was able to play it nicely and I got in.”

Maddy participated in the Elite Competition for the first time this year. For her performance, she was to play a flowing prelude by Reinhold Gliere, a Russian composer who composed in the romantic style during the first half of the 20th century.

The two girls began their piano studies with Baladad eight years ago after enrolling in a course in music fundamentals for children.

“They took one class, and after that they wanted to sign up for lessons,” Baladad said.

The passion for music has continued. Mia said she likes the piano because she is “able to express emotion while playing,” while Maddy said she finds it “interesting because there’s many types of piano pieces, like romantic. It expresses your emotions very well.”

The two have to share a piano at home, but they both manage to get in about an hour of practice a day. “We take turns,” said Maddy, a student at Hawaii Baptist Academy.

They’re excited to play at Carnegie Hall. “I know it’s in New York, and I know it’s a really special place,” Mia said. “I’m super lucky to get to play there.”

“It’s a really big honor to play there,” Maddy said.

For Baladad, seeing her students perform at Carnegie Hall is a “full circle moment.” She herself played at Carnegie Hall when she was in middle school and again when she was in college studying music at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

“To have not one, but two students get to play there is pretty surreal,” Baladad said.

She is trying to impress upon her students the magic of the moment.

“As a 12-, 13-year-old, I didn’t really understand the depth of what it meant to play there,” she said. “When I went back in college, I was able to soak it in a little more, appreciate what it meant to be able to play on that stage, just carrying all the teachers who had brought me there.”

Like her teacher, Mia hopes to get a repeat performance at Carnegie Hall when she gets older. Maddy also wants to improve and play “more difficult pieces and keep growing at piano. It’s really exciting to play,” she said.

Their parents are not musicians. Their mother, Mari, is a manager at Aulani, a Disney Resort &Spa, Hawai‘i, and their father, Paul, is a captain with the Honolulu Police Department.

Both girls are also black belts in taekwondo, but they’re not too worried about hurting their hands. “We’re mostly using our feet,” Mia said.