NAMES + FACES

My journey with Vira + Friends began during a memorable stroll along the Williamsburg waterfront in 2019, where Vira and I explored our shared passion for building music communities. I'm drawn to the Vira + Friends' ethos of using a community-minded focus to highlight composers of diverse backgrounds—values that resonate with my own work through my music salon series Soundshop. I fondly remember the "Sweet Mystery" collaboration with the Victor Herbert Foundation, which illustrated his impact on American musical theater and demonstrated how focused, biographical shows can create lasting connections for audiences. My dream is for Vira + Friends to achieve recognition in classical music circles while remaining accessible to diverse audiences through Vira's exceptional curatorial vision and engaging stage presence. For me, music creates profound connections to our universal humanity—linking composer, performer, and listener across time and background—which is why I value the thoughtful conversations that Vira + Friends cultivates around shared musical experiences.

Love, unrequited or reciprocated, regret, death, overcoming the odds, loyalty, resistance, and purpose, are just some of the universal themes explored by Vira + Friends in their intimate live performances.  These are familiar, and personal, to me even as someone who formed their musical tastes going to Ann Arbor college rock and dance clubs and coming of age listening to large doses of Bob Seger, Iggy Pop, and nearby Motown.  Just after Russia’s 2022 unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, I saw Vira perform, was blown away and have been part of the team ever since.  As a fellow Ukrainian American, and long-time Bob Geldof (of Band Aid/Live Aid fame) admirer, I was further taken and inspired by her vision of ways to support Ukraine and other worthy causes through music.  Since that time, I have worked with her to organize over a dozen concerts throughout the Northeast and Midwest.  As Treasurer, my dream for Vira + Friends is for it to sustainably expand its community and programming further to help unite people through awareness and understanding.

Evolving from audience member to collaborator, I've been able to join Vira + Friends in a way that bridges art forms, helping them to unite under a common goal. Inspired by the evocative song selections in the Vira + Friends repertoire, I create images to accompany the music, blending them in video format as fully-realized collaborative pieces with a distinctive illustrative hand. One day I'd like to bring this pairing of sights and sounds off the screen and into the real world by utilizing projections during a live performance or by having a small gallery of related artworks available to view at a Vira+ Friends concert. 

I started Vira + Friends to create opportunities for myself and my colleagues to explore and share music and story. In conversation with audience members at the conclusion of the first concert, Vira + Friends Sing the Classics (May 2018), and in the following weeks, I realized that audience members’ discovery of the works are as exciting and significant as those of the performers. Since that time I have been committed to building a community of artists and appreciators to delve into and enjoy the music of an expansive range of creators. I’d love for Vira + Friends to grow to the size and strength that would allow us to present the occasional concert with orchestra.

I have regularly performed with Vira + Friends since 2018. I appreciate the commitment to programming great repertoire from under-represented composers and in languages beyond the standard repertoire. I would enjoy seeing Vira + Friends develop more multidisciplinary collaborations.