International politics have reached Carmel. Carmel Music Society canceled a November concert featuring Russian pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who had performances scrubbed in recent years due to her perceived pro-Russia views. Agata Popęda here, the Weekly’s Slavic expert-in-chief, with at least a part of the story.
Lisitsa comes with quite a background. Of mixed Russian-Ukrainian-Polish heritage, she was discovered as a talented pianist by a YouTube audience while living in North Carolina in 2013. The same year, she was described as “the classical pianist with 55 million YouTube hits,” then signed to a label in May, which released her London concert debut—at the Royal Albert Hall—a month later.
While her YouTube videos and most Facebook posts show her life as a musician, Lisitsa mostly uses Twitter (now X) to share her political views. Posts start in the time of the pro-Western Maidan protests in Ukraine, which resulted in the ouster of the country's pro-Russia president in 2014.
But soon her tweets and retweets became more provoking. “If people are really interested in digging deeper, they can see that I am not pro-Putin, I'm not pro-Russian. I'm an equal-opportunity slanderer,” she said in an interview. She also tweeted: “In a new European Ukraine, the camps will give the subhumans [ethnic Russians] condemned to the gas chambers an opportunity to offset their carbon footprint.”
In 2015, her concert with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra was canceled after controversial comments she made about the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Since then, many venues and organizations have done the same.
In early 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Lisitsa expressed her opposition to what she considered Western interference within Ukraine. On May 9, 2022 she played a concert in Mariupol, Ukraine in commemoration of its control by Russia.
It’s unknown if her Carmel cancellation was directly related to her posts—Carmel Music Society declined to comment on the situation, while Lisitsa had not responded to a request for comment as of press time.
Naturally, this story also presents a free speech issue, and when and where free speech ends. On X? On the streets? In a concert hall? And then, we have questions about artists as political individuals. Do they owe us moral decency because they are in the spotlight?
(1) comment
I don’t know about you, but I only listen to music by musicians with non-controversial views I also subscribe to…said no one ever…at least I hope not. Why deprive yourself or - worse - others - of hearing an artist’s music because her cheeky posts on X - which few locals have likely read - might offend? I hope this isn’t the reason, though I have avoided a concert or two where I expected political statements to be made from the stage, but that is a very different scenario than this one.
I remember, years ago, I was trying to organize a fundraiser for an arts org in Carmel, and I suggested a piano performance with two famous and highly-talented locals: Leon Panetta and Condoleeza Rice. What an exciting event that might have been! One board member chimed in, “I don’t like her politics.” Small-mindedness has spread since. How sad, when we should be bringing people together and celebrating the arts.
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