Is it legal to have a haircut during a banned concert?
NewsFrom the Amsterdam Concertgebouw:
Kapsalon Het Concertgebouw is van start met de Symfonie no. 2 van Charles Ives door @ConcertgbOrkest onder leiding van Susanna Mälkki. #kapsalontheater #conertgebouw pic.twitter.com/yDyhwVpVWp
— Het Concertgebouw (@Concertgebouw) January 19, 2022
You may have to be Dutch to get the full force of the message but it appears to be a protest by artists against the Government’s total concert ban while it allowed hair salons to remain open.
This snip is taking place while Susanna Mälkki is conducting. Too short at the sides?
Photo: C’bouw/Milagro Elstak
Mälkki conducting the Ives second: I’d go a long way to hear that performance!
Keeping salons open but concerts closed makes no sense to me; but at least the hairdresser and customer are masked; it makes no sense to have the non-wind-playing orchestra members unmasked.
Flannel mask makes precious little difference but makes everyone feel virtuous and politicians can say they’re doing something
It’s nice that there are still some members of the music industry that have some backbone and value the art form more than some nebulous and ill-defined idea of safety.
Ha, ha, clever.
With all due respect to Susanna Mälkki, who is serious enough of a conductor that she is a serious contender for every major music director opening from New York to Amsterdam, this type of stunt, organized by orchestras desperate for audience attention and buzz (no pun intended), is beneath her, even if it works (look, we’re talking about it on Slipped Disc).
dalet, I guess you don’t live here in The Netherlands where all concert halls, museums and restaurants are closed due to covid, while hair salons and other similar services have been permitted to reopen. This was not a PR stunt seeking audience attention, but rather a form of protest, to illuminate to government officials as well as the public the vagaries of public policy. A concert hall with limited and enforced assigned seating that guarantees social distancing and with audience masked and remaining in place once seated presents no more exposure than most salon services where individuals are in much closer contact, and probably less exposure than the weekly open air markets where people crowd together around stalls lining narrow aisles with no mask mandate (and the vast majority unmasked).
While that’s certainly clever, it’s not like a hairdresser simultaneously has several thousand clients in a room together.
Monsoon, there is much closer personal contact when receiving salon services than when attending a classical concert. I would also note that in most countries that have resumed concert life, the number of tickets that can be sold is typically less than half of hall capacity and frequently as low as one-quarter capacity, with seats assigned so as to allow social distancing, and with mask mandates strictly enforced. That was certainly the case in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw at a concert I attended shortly before live concerts were banned. Certainly safer and more distanced than travel in an airplane or train, which continues with zero social distancing (and spotty mask compliance on trains)
Thought it was a piece by Leroy Anderson.
I once had a concert during a banned haircut and felt terrible. There was no time and it all hung in front of my eyes.
Sally