The Orchester symphonique de Montréal (OSM) has announced a new postponement of its concert with the French rap group IAM. The shows scheduled for May 2-5 are now postponed to fall 2023.
The postponement appears to be the direct consequence of the anti-vaccination and anti-vaccination passport positions of certain members of the group.
“The OSM and the emblematic French rap group IAM, wishing to bring together the best conditions to perform together on the Maison symphonique stage, have deemed it preferable to move this long-awaited meeting to the fall of 2023.” This is the message broadcast Wednesday morning by Pascale Ouimet, head of public relations and media relations at the OSM.
Following questions from the Homework Wednesday, the OSM indicated in the afternoon that “the postponement of the OSM X IAM concerts is mainly due to the health requirements currently in force for all travelers entering Canada”. In clearer terms, these requirements are likely to pose a problem for at least one of the five members of the group. And for good reason. Two months ago, Akhenaton, whose real name is Philippe Fragione, declared: “I will not be vaccinated when I am immunized” (he developed the disease in the summer of 2021 and was briefly hospitalized). Previously, he sharply rejected “gene therapy”.
A bottleneck at the entrance
The duty had already questioned the Orchestra last February, in a broader sense, on the moral legitimacy of holding a concert in the spring with musicians whose leader, Akhenaton, had, in France, made a notorious support of anti-vaccines and anti-health passport, going, in October 2021, to paying for tests for non-vaccinated people to allow them access to their concerts.
In other words, how could an institution that has been able to stay afloat thanks to the aid and economic and health measures taken during the pandemic, be able to allocate its resources to the organization of shows with people denying the legitimacy and the usefulness of its measures?
The OSM had gone ahead. It is true that these concerts initially scheduled for April 2020 then postponed to October 2021, before landing on the calendar in May 2022, are a real financial boon for the Orchestra: four full evenings in times marked by an undeniable nervousness of the public, it’s unique.
Even if French rappers could have entered Canada, anyone not adequately vaccinated must provide a test and submit to a 14-day quarantine with, in the event of non-compliance, a penalty of up to 750 $000.
After a hypothetical quarantine, on stage, the “best conditions” dear to the OSM include the standards of the CNESST, where the “specific measures for artists in the performing arts and performance halls” are applicable to artists ” adequately protected”, a strictly defined framework.
It would also have been hard to see how musicians as fussy about their safety as those of the OSM, who had gone far beyond sanitary standards when they played Vivaldi with a choir in December 2020, would have put themselves in danger with rappers. IAM management contacted by The duty had not yet replied at the time of this writing.
It remains, for those who think that the reception of IAM is a high point in the history of the OSM, to hope that in the fall of 2023 the COVID will be behind us and that measures protecting the population and artists will not will have more place to be.