The concert at the Big Concert Hall “Oktyabrsky” was not the first performance of the group over the past month, which will not take place on the appointed date
ShareTwo days before the concert in St. Petersburg, ticket holders for the BI-2 concert received a message: “The play “Letters and Songs” by the Quartet I and the BI-2 group on May 18, 2022 is postponed. The transfer date will be announced later. Tickets are valid.”
The postponement of the concert did not come as a surprise. On April 28, the first cancellation occurred on the tour of Lyova and Shura. Their concert in Omsk was supposed to complete the tour in Siberia, in which the group played seven concerts in five cities. However, according to the Omsk portal Om1.ru 15 minutes before the start of the performance, a local official, First Deputy Minister of Sports of the Omsk Region Ivan Kolesnik, came out to the public and announced that there would be no concert. The reason is that the group hung up a banner with a flag and the inscription “For the President!”.
“We did it secretly, at night. Not agreeing with anyone. We spent the whole day in negotiations, but the organizers refused to meet halfway. As a result, we had to independently remove this black fabric from the banner, following which the artists refused to perform in front of the Omsk people, ”Kolesnik quotes the angry speech he addressed to the public.
However, later on their page on social networks, the musicians denied these accusations. According to them, before the concert in each city, they set up scenery for the show on the stage.
“For every B-2 show, we build a black cabinet around the stage to provide visual isolation. This is an integral part of the scenography: we build a similar structure at all our concerts”, wrote in social networks following the concert musicians.
Indeed, on photographs From the concerts it can be seen that the stage space is made in a single-color black color, and a multimedia image is projected onto the backdrop. Later on the network appeared photoswhere you can see that a bright banner is located above the “cabinet”, and it is really tightened with a black cloth, but this can be quite explained by the need for “visual isolation” of the space declared by the musicians.
Suddenly, pro-government media people stood up for the group.
“This whole story around Bi2 is an incident of the performer, I’m sure,” commented the next day following the Omsk events, the situation was Maria Zakharova, a representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry. – It happens: everyone wants the best, but it doesn’t even turn out well. There is no ideology, no politics there, not even close.”
The official urged “not to repeat the mistakes of Western countries” and not to persecute the group.
Later in a series of posts spoke out Zakhar Prilepin. Condemning the fact that the banner with the slogan was hung up, he nevertheless admitted that few of the domestic groups are able to surpass the popularity of the team. He called Bi-2, as well as Shevchuk and Makarevich, absolute stars.
“With rare exceptions, we have no other stars of this scale of fame and audience coverage,” Prilepin wrote.
However, the wave of cancellations and postponements began to gain momentum. April 30, the Penza edition of PenzaSMI, citing a source in the regional government reportedthat the governor of the region Oleg Melnichenko instructed to remove all banners with the announcement of the concert of the Bi-2 group, which was to be held on May 23.
On May 5, fans of the group who bought tickets for the concert received a notification that there would be no concert, and the money for the tickets would be returned to them. The reasons for the cancellation of the performance were not named; in the official group of musicians, the city simply disappeared from the tour poster.
On May 12, on the personal page of Elena Yampolskaya, head of the State Duma Committee on Culture, deputy of the United Russia faction, appeared record:
“The information that in Kazan, on the site of the Tatneft Arena, on June 1, a concert of the Bi2 group will take place, is outdated and at the moment no longer corresponds to reality. As a deputy of the State Duma from the Republic of Tatarstan, I inform you with knowledge: there will be no concert.
Popular bloggers are sure that the cancellations are not accidental and offer their own versions of events.
“The group is specifically blackmailed in all cities: either you perform under the letter Z in the stage scenery (as they tried to do in Omsk, as a result of which the concert was canceled), or there will be no performances,” writes telegram channel “Bloody Lady”, hosted by Ksenia Sobchak, – As a result, they filmed concerts in Kazan, Ufa, Penza. Petersburg and Astrakhan are planned, but they are unlikely to be allowed to speak.
By the way, concert in Ufawhich is scheduled for June 5, contrary to Sobchak’s forecasts, has not yet been canceled, and you can buy tickets for it at a cost of two to eight and a half thousand rubles.
“Everyone understands that there are no Bi-2s and Time Machines in the BKZ or other Russian sites in the foreseeable future. And the announcements hanging on the network have not yet been removed due to negotiations in the legal field. And all the manipulations around come down only to the allocation of money to feed Internet trolls, ” the authors are sure anonymous Telegram channel Hermitage Moles.
The concert of the Bi-2 group and the Quartet I collective called Letters and Songs in St. Petersburg was to be held on May 18 at the Oktyabrsky Concert Hall. Nonna Grishaeva was supposed to participate in the concert as a special Alex Reed. The play “Letters and Songs of Middle-Aged Men” is usually performed by the quartet with “Accident”. With Bi-2, the artists release “special editions of the play”, where theatrical monologues are interspersed with the group’s compositions.
On May 16, ticket holders received a notification that the concert had been postponed indefinitely.
In the Concert Hall Oktyabrsky, as well as in the Committee for Culture of St. Petersburg, Fontanka was assured that they were not the initiators of the postponement of the concert and that there were no banners with “Z” hanging in the hall, the design did not change. According to them, the initiative to postpone came from the organizers of the concert – the agency NCA.
The press service of the musical group did not answer the calls of the Fontanka correspondent, dropping them. The press service of the artists from the Quartet I first promised to give a comment to Fontanka following agreeing with the NCA, but then changed their mind and also decided to remain silent. For comments, they also advised to contact the NCA. Its head, Mikhail Shurygin, did not pick up the phone when our correspondent called, and the employees asked us to prepare an official request.
At the time of publication of the material, the NCA concert agency did not respond to the publication’s request.
Maria Lashcheva, Fontanka.ru
