Thomas Dutronc fails at the tribute concert to Françoise Hardy at the Bourges Festival

The tribute to Françoise Hardy will occur without her son. Thomas Dutronc was expected Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. at the Le Printemps de Bourges music festival for a tribute show to his mother. But he ultimately won't come. “He was surprised by an air traffic controllers’ strike,” musician Ambroise Willaume, alias Sage, told the newspaper Le Berry Républicain. Movement which will notably affect Parisian airports on Thursday. According to the Printemps de Bourges press service, the singer, who came from Corsica, could a priori be there this evening but was not guaranteed to be able to leave tomorrow due to the strike.

Sage is the initiator of the Messages Personnels François Hardy project, a celebration of the singer's register who celebrated her 80th birthday this year. “As Thomas Dutronc had to do songs that we had already done the first time by other people, we are going to try to find solutions like that, because we are not going to be able to bounce back and change everything (...) It's is the son of Françoise Hardy, it was obvious that he was there. But it's a tribute from a new generation, it remains totally coherent. We think so that it is there without being there,” explains Sage.

At the Hyper Week-end Festival in Paris at the end of January, the creation Messages Personnels François Hardy had already been performed by around ten artists including Thomas Dutronc, Clara Luciani and Philippe Katerine.

Françoise Hardy, aged 80, has been fighting cancer for several years. She confided in December 2023 her wish to “leave soon and quickly, without too many challenges, such as the impossibility of breathing”. “Even if my mother is doing very poorly and walking with great difficulty, she is not yet in the state where we can wish to die,” Thomas Dutronc responded to AFP in January 2024. “She does not want to die. She wants to stay for me, it's moving. She wants to transmit,” he added.