[Dixielandjazz] Reminder - Turn off your cellphone at concerts

[Stephen G Barbone]

Not OKOM but the message applies. VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Ringing Finally Ended, but There’s No Button to Stop Shame

By DANIEL J. WAKIN - NYTIMES


They were baying for blood in the usually polite precincts of Avery  
Fisher Hall.

The unmistakably jarring sound of an iPhone marimba ring interrupted  
the soft and spiritual final measures of Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 at  
the New York Philharmonic on Tuesday night. The conductor,Alan  
Gilbert, did something almost unheard-of in a concert hall: He stopped  
the performance. But the ringing kept on going, prompting increasingly  
angry shouts in the audience directed at the malefactor.

After words from Mr. Gilbert, and what seemed like weeks, the  
cellphone owner finally silenced his device. After the audience  
cheered, the concert resumed. Internet vitriol ensued.

But no one, it seems, felt worse than the culprit, who agreed to an  
interview on Thursday on condition that he not be identified — for  
obvious reasons.

“You can imagine how devastating it is to know you had a hand in  
that,” said the man, who described himself as a business executive  
between 60 and 70 who runs two companies. “It’s horrible, horrible.”  
The man said he had not slept in two days.

The man, called Patron X by the Philharmonic, said he was a lifelong  
classical music lover and 20-year subscriber to the orchestra who was  
friendly with several of its members. He said he himself was often  
irked by coughs, badly timed applause — and cellphone rings. “Then  
God, there was I. Holy smokes,” he said.

“It was just awful to have any role in something like that, that is so  
disturbing and disrespectful not only to the conductor but to all the  
musicians and not least to the audience, which was so into this  
concert,” he said by telephone.

“I hope the people at that performance and members of the orchestra  
can certainly forgive me for this whole event. I apologize to the  
whole audience.”

Patron X said he received a call from an orchestra official the day  
after the concert. He had been identified by his front-row seat. The  
official politely asked him not to do it again, he said, and the man  
took the opportunity to ask to speak to Mr. Gilbert, to apologize in  
person.

The men talked by telephone (it was a land line) on Thursday  
afternoon. Mr. Gilbert said he told Patron X, “I’m really sorry you  
had to go through this,” and accepted his apology.

Before that, the disruption became the marimba ring tone heard round  
the world, prompting feverish commentary on blogs and comment forums  
about performance interruptions.

In a Twitter message, the composer Daniel Dorff said, “Changed my  
ringtone to play #Mahler 9 just in case.” A YouTube poster  
superimposed a marimba sound over a performance of the piece by  
Leonard Bernstein.

The episode seemed to serve as an extreme example of how one of the  
staples of modern life can disrupt a live performance, because of both  
Mr. Gilbert’s reaction and the guilty party’s long delay in shutting  
off the cellphone.

Actually, Patron X said he had no idea he was the culprit. He said his  
company replaced his BlackBerry with an iPhone the day before the  
concert. He said he made sure to turn it off before the concert, not  
realizing that the alarm clock had accidentally been set and would  
sound even if the phone was in silent mode.

“I didn’t even know phones came with alarms,” the man said.

But as Mr. Gilbert was glaring in his direction, he fiddled with the  
phone as others around him did, just to be sure, pressing buttons.  
That was when the sound stopped. It was only in the car going home  
that his wife checked the settings on his phone and found that the  
alarm had been set.

Cellphones often go off during all sorts of performances, but the  
Mahler incident was a rarity: It happened during one of music’s most  
sublime moments, it did not stop after a few seconds, and it emanated  
from the front row, where it was impossible for Mr. Gilbert to ignore.

The Philharmonic said the ushers at Avery Fisher Hall — who work for  
Lincoln Center, not the orchestra — should have intervened. Lincoln  
Center said it was investigating.

Both Mr. Gilbert and Patron X found something positive in the episode.

“It shows how important people still feel live performance is,” Mr.  
Gilbert said. “This is something people either consciously or  
implicitly recognize as sacred.”

The patron agreed. The incident underscored “the very enduring and  
important bond between the audience and the performers,” he said,  
adding, “If it’s disturbed in any significant way, it just shows how  
precious this whole union is.”

James Barron contributed reporting.