French prog rock quintet Lazuli have announced they have rescheduled live dates that were curtailed mid-tour in the wake of the Coronavirus. The shows will see the band play their recently released ninth studio album, Le Fantastique Envoi de Dieter Böhm (The Fantastic Flight of Dieter Böhm) in its entirety accompanied by a video projection which tells the story of this concept album.
The follow-up to 2018’s Saison 8, is an allegorical fable and is a special tribute to all their loyal fans. It is dedicated to Dieter Böhm, a German fan who travels everywhere across Europe to see them play live. The concept of the album tells how a musician plants a note on a desert island, which then grows into a melody and finally a song. Then, like a message in a bottle, it is cast out to the waves to find a listener, the recipient in this instance being Dieter who then merges into the sound.
“With Lazuli, we realise how lucky we are to share our music, so we live our lives enjoying each moment, and this time, this philosophy was totally exacerbated," explains singer Dominique Leonetti. "We wanted to honour our concerts and our fans but every day brought us worrying news from our French and Italian families. We were on the road to Liverpool on March 16, we were to play the next day at the Cavern Club and I assure you that the decision to stop the tour was difficult for the Beatles fan that I am. When France announced the closure of the borders, the situation became obvious: "show must not go on". We drove all afternoon, all night and arrived home in the south of France in the late morning, just one hour before curfew and mandatory confinement.
"We all brooded for a week, saying to ourselves 'tonight we should have played in London, in Glasgow, here or there...'. Thirty concerts are now cancelled; the musician’s life gets us use to not knowing what will happen tomorrow but this time the future is really foggy. Beyond the worry and sadness, we know we are lucky despite everything, we are "prisoners" at home but each of us with his family and that is the essential, when so much drama is played around.
"We are afraid now for our fans, we hope they take care of them because we will soon come back, make up for lost time… We are Froggies, we should be able to bounce back ;-) Once the virus is gone, we will have to face Brexit, but it will take more than that to dissuade us from crossing the Channel!"
Lazuli will play:
March 1: Cambridge The Portland Arms
March 2: Newcastle Think Tank
March 3: Glasgow Ivory Blacks
March 4: Liverpool The Cavern Club
March 6: Sourport Fusion Festival}
March 7: Southampton 1865
June 23: London 229
June 26: Somerset
Tickets are on sale via the venues and tickets already purchased for the cancelled dates are valid for the new dates.
