Opportunity Knocks

Vira + Friends presents Opportunity Knocks: a concert cabaret - songs and stories of people finding their way. Featuring coloratura soprano Brooke Schooley, contralto Vira Slywotzky and pianist David Sytkowski performing classical and popular music.

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About the artists:

Coloratura soprano Brooke Schooley has been singing professionally for 15 years, mostly in classical venues in the Northeast. She regularly performs leading coloratura roles with regional opera companies and has appeared with Bronx Opera, Hubbard Hall Opera Theatre, Light Opera of New York, Empire Opera, Delaware Valley Opera and The Martina Arroyo Foundation. She has performed the following roles: Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), Madame Herz (Der Schauspieldirektor), Blonde (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Adina (L’Elisir d’Amore), Gretel (Hansel and Gretel), Susanna (The Marriage of Figaro), Angelina (Trial by Jury), Monica (The Medium), Lucy (The Telephone), Miss Pinkerton (The Old Maid and the Thief) and Mabel (The Pirates of Penzance).

In 2024, Brooke performed her one woman cabaret show, Who Knows Where or When, about the roller coaster of caring for parents with dementia. She is currently working on a new show about her Wall Street career.“SCHOOLEY SHINES…her voice expertly trills and soars as her character fauns, cajoles, argues and laughs, sometimes like a comical singing hyena.” Schmopera“SUCH AN INCREDIBLE VOICE, and the acting chops to go with it. She was a delight…her performance of “Glitter and Be Gay” was out of this world.” Sullivan Valley Democrat“A MARVELOUS LYRIC AS WELL AS SOARING VOICE.” Times Herald-Record

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

www.viraslywotzky.com

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.

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. Most recently Vira + Friends presented Sea Songs: a concert/cabaret honoring the work of Billion Oyster Project and celebrating life above, below and by the waves in music. 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).

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