Vira + Friends, in partnership with the Billion Oyster Project, presents Sea Songs: a concert/cabaret featuring contralto Vira Slywotzky and pianist David Sytkowski.

Acclaimed duo Slywotzky and Sytkowski perform a program of classical and popular song celebrating ocean life.

About the performing artists and presenting organizations:
Contralto Vira Slywotzky has performed principal roles with Seattle Opera, Chautauqua Opera, Chelsea Opera, Center for Contemporary Opera, Sarasota Opera and Boston Midsummer Opera. She has sung concerts, recitals and cabarets in New York City venues from The Duplex to Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall and on tour all over the United States. Internationally Slywotzky has been heard in Canada, France, Hungary, Sweden and Wales.

A champion of new music, she has workshopped and premiered more than 30 works including songs, full scale opera and narration with orchestra.

Since February 2022 Slywotzky has been serving as a cultural ambassador and fundraising for Razom for Ukraine and other organizations providing aid to and supporting Ukraine. Her performances have collected over $250,000.

Participant in numerous competitions and winner of awards, most significantly Slywotzky was the sole representative of the USA at the 2009 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition.

“Vira Slywotzky is an immensely talented, charismatic performer who transforms herself, and captivates her audience with her songs and tales.” – The Village View

She is a proud and happy Billion Oyster Project volunteer.

Pianist David Sytkowski is a Visiting Artist in Residence at Bard College and the Bard College Conservatory of Music, where he is Director of Music for Opera Workshop, leads the Musical Theatre Performance Workshop, coaches singers and teaches private piano.

VOWEL MOVEMENTS, a subversive classical/cabaret/drag collaboration with Pretty Lamé, with support of the New York State Council on the Arts, premiered at Hudson Hall in June 2023 and was remounted for ICA Miami in February 2024.

In September 2019, he made his Joe’s Pub debut in Under The Influence with legendary cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond. This led to Auntie Glam’s Happy Hour, a weekly livestream during the initial COVID-19 shut down that New York Times critic Zachary Woolf proclaimed one of “The Best of the Year’s At-Home Divas” in December 2020. Recent appearances with Vivian include Feinstein’s at the Nikko San Francisco and Little Island in NYC Summer 2024.

He frequently performs as a symphony pianist and collaborator at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Joe’s Pub, The Duplex, the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, and Hudson Hall.

Billion Oyster Project is a nonprofit organization restoring oyster reefs to New York Harbor through public education initiatives. By engaging students, volunteers, and community scientists, we work to rebuild a once-abundant ecosystem, improve water quality, and foster stronger connections between New Yorkers and their local waterways. Since 2014, we’ve planted over 150 million oysters and partnered with more than 20,000 students and 19 acres of oyster restoration citywide. Help us restore the one billion oysters with the help of one million people!

Vira Slywotzky founded Vira + Friends in May 2018 with the intent of bringing people together to enjoy the live performance of music written for voice and piano. Since that time Vira + Friends has become a multiform concert series with the expanded missions of developing audiences for classical music and providing a platform for composers traditionally neglected by the Western canon. Two exciting developments of the past year include the launch of a long term international project presenting the works of women composers past and present and the formation of the Ukrainian Music Initiative. Vira + Friends is a nonprofit corporation under the auspices of the Ukrainian American Educational Center of Boston, a 501(c)(3).