IOC statement about latest events.

Independent Opera Company is really saddened and shocked by the horrible events happening in Europe with Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine. While these events are universally terrible, we are particularly upset and take the matter personally as IOC Founding Artistic Director Galina Barskaya is originally from Kiev, Ukraine and still has family and friends there.

We would like to issue the following statement to clarify our position.

We resolutely condemn Russia's unprovoked aggression toward Ukraine. We are deeply pained and saddened by the suffering of Ukrainian people.

We condemn those prominent figures in Russian cultural life who have been and still do support Putin and his oppressive regime.

We, however, don't think that this condemnation should be spread to cancelling and shunning all of the cultural contributions that were made by Russia throughout the history, including, but not limited to musical contributions. Many of the composers of Tsarist Russia and especially Soviet Union were themselves oppressed and persecuted. Yet they continued contributing beautiful work for the better of the whole Humanity.

We are proud to perform works by Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Qui, and Prokofiev.

IOC Artistic Director Galina Barskaya says: "Beautiful music and artistic works that IOC performs will always support and promote love, peace and harmony, be they Russian, American, Italian, French, Ukrainian, German, Czech or any other language and country."

As great American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein said, “This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”