Symphony orchestra cancel concert due to restrictions

It is the third time the orchestra has had to abandon plans to resume its activities after the pandemic and tickets were already on sale for the concert scheduled for the new Les Quennevais School on 14 August.

Nick Cabot, the JSO’s president, said the decision had been taken with regret but the sudden increase in cases of Covid-19 meant it was too risky to bring together 65 musicians for a week’s rehearsal programme ahead of the concert.

The JSO’s summer concert, which is normally the largest event in its calendar, had already been scaled back because Fort Regent’s Gloucester Hall was not available – a smaller group of musicians would have performed to an audience of around 400 at Les Quennevais School in a programme including the Elgar Cello Concerto with Gerard Le Feuvre as soloist.

Mr Cabot said that the orchestra’s council, which met in a Zoom meeting on Wednesday evening had reluctantly taken the decision to cancel the concert as circumstances changed again this week.

He said: ‘An orchestra is not like a choir where if you lose three or four people it’s not the end of the world because they’re one of four or eight voices, probably, but an orchestra does have quite a number of key players in each section, people who you just can’t afford to lose.

‘If we started to lose key players the whole standard of the orchestra would suffer and there would be nothing we could do.’

Mr Cabot said the JSO will be back and confirmed that Les Quennevais School had been booked for the Christmas concert which is scheduled for 19 December.

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