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Subscribe to RSSDuring Mahler's Ninth Symphony a ringing cell phone caused the conductor to stop the concert on Wednesday in New York City. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
Concertgoers at the New York Philharmonic Tuesday night did not have to be musicologists to work out that the marimba was not part of the famous work.
Conductor Alan Gilbert halted the performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony when the offending iPhone ringtone sounded -- and persisted.
Just minutes from the end of the hour and a half-long piece, Gilbert turned to the phone's owner, seated close to the front of Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, according to an eyewitness account published by "Superconductor" blogger Paul Pelkonen.
“The symphony ends incredibly quietly so there was literally no way that we could go on, Gilbert told NBC News. "So I stopped the music and I asked the general vicinity where the sound was coming from ‘please turn off your cellphone.’ And I had to ask several times..."
In the ensuing pause, some in the audience reportedly called for blood, shouting: "Kick him out!" and "$1,000 fine!" the witness recounted.
Gilbert quietly employed shame until the offender -- described as an elderly man by another blogger -- confirmed that the phone was off.
Before continuing with the concert, Gilbert apologized and explained that normally it’s best to ignore such disturbances, but he said this was "so egregious that I could not allow it."
This was the first time Gilbert has stopped the orchestra for a violation of the "cell-phones off" rule, a media contact at the symphony said, but at least the second time that it has happened in the symphony’s history.
For classical music buffs who witnessed it, there was some satisfaction to be gained from the incident, which occurred in what is otherwise a quiet and mesmerizing part of the Mahler work.
"In a way, it’s great that that schlimazel’s iPhone happened to go off at such a sweet spot in Mahler’s Ninth on Tuesday. All of us… got to exercise some righteous indignation, schadenfreude, and the adrenaline rush of watching a fight," wrote a classical music blogger on "thousandfold echo."
The downside, said the writer, was that after "Mahlergate" there was just no turning back the clock.
"After this kerfuffle, it’s impossible to talk about the actual music, just as it was impossible for listeners to return to the symphony’s transcendent stillness after the cellphone," with news coverage focused on the man with the marimba, and "nary a pixel spent on what came before or after."
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This conductor would never make it in rock and roll. What would he do if a fight broke out in front of him, or some drunk heiffer climbed up on stage and grabbed a mic? What a lightweight.
not to sound like an @!$%# but generally speaking Classical audiences would have more class than to break out in publicly drunken fight...just saying
I dunno. Mahler can do funny things to people.
You should see Opera arguments......
The older I get, the more I can understand how this could happen. Trust me, it will happen to all you youngsters not too long from now.....
Yes, but why didn't he silence the phone once it started ringing? This is my question. If he had stopped it instead of just letting it go (which seems to be the reason for the stopped performance) this wouldn't have happened.
I was in a musical with my friend once when we heard a ring tone that sounded strangely like my friend's. We looked around because surely, it couldn't have been hers. She had turned it off! It was hers though. What had happened was something in her purse had pressed the on button. She didn't have it on locked, so the phone turned back on without her knowing. Just saying - its possible the guy thought the phone was off.
This isn't government related at all. Why can't a concert hall require that all cell phones be check in like coats? If you are so important that you can't do without your cell phone for a few hours then you shouldn't be at the symphony. Go watch it on youtube or something.
I don't think requiring cell phones being turned in would work. Most people aren't going to want to risk losing their phone and you can't exactly frisk them for it.
I wouldn't give someone my $700 phone... Would you really... I am paying them to enjoy a concert, so I do not expect to be treated like I am visiting the State Pen. Dur....
Sounds like Cell Phone Guy did us all a service - and I'm a classical music fan. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Mahler's music is not as bad as it sounds."
Here, in the US, we should be allowed to have our cell phones ringing anywhere.
Isn't that the politically correct thing to do. I mean aren't we being told to give rights to a small minority when the majority must live with the consequences. Come on ACLU, get on this one. Show some guts and grit and stand up for this PC right. If the ACLU can protect us from peanut butter, latex, loud ads, hate crimes, prayers and religious symbols, why can't they save us from not getting a phone call.
You don't have an idea what ACLU is about?
Sure I do AlexG, it stands for Anal Cultural Liberals United and they "cherry pick" issues and causes for the liberal left and then use their interpretation of the law to limit freedoms.
AlexG the left loves the ACLU but the christian citizens of this country see the ACLU as a tool of their abusers hell-bent on stripping them of their rights under the first amendment along with SCOTUS.
justice fleeting, it seems you are one of those who is obsessed with the fact that you cannot dictate the world according to your desires. That would explain why you have resorted to the bizarre, bringing in your obviously very narrow understanding of politics in a large and complex world, when the topic of discussion/debate has absolutely nothing to do with politics, unless you think in terms that all of social structures are politics.
I was once at La Philarmonic and Gustavo Dudamel performing Mahler's Ninth Symphony. There was no ringing phone. But there was some a-hole in the lobby, talking at his phone, during the quietest final minutes of the finale, and everybody in the hall could hear that.
Can anyone say lawsuit? Imagine the humiliation and embarrassment the man must have experienced at being singled out just because he had an important phone call. I hope he had engaged a lawyer and asks for big bucks.
What's really screwed up is that in America, they could come up with a jury that would vote in the old man's favor...
They should cancel his season tickets.
Cell phones are for Noobs....
Schadenfreude ? Was sollte es doch sein ? Ich lasse mein Cellphone im Auto.
I am so glad the fellow did not bring his Landline.
As annoying as this incident may have been, just imagine you were in the audience with your elderly grandfather, who perhaps barely knows how to operate the phone, and probably only has a phone because his family insisted he get one "for emergences." The man may not have even be able to hear the phone due to his age and the music.
To those feeling sorry for the "elderly man" who "barely knows how to operate a phone": Please! The article says the ringing WENT ON AND ON until FINALLY the conductor stopped, turned and looked at him. Then magically all of a sudden he knew his phone was ringing and figured out how to turn it off. Also, he was sitting near the front. Tickets like that are spendy and bought by fans. It wasn't ole Grandpa Norbert on a day out from the nursing home who doesn't know how to operate this newfangled doohicky called a phone. This was arrogance, plain and simple. This was the emotional climax the music had been building to (although it is an EMOTIONAL one, not a loud one), and to have an annoying electronic marimba burst in would completely ruin it -- sort of like listening to your favorite singer do a really dramatic, heartfelt version of the Star Spangled Banner on the 4th of July, and just as they get to "the land of the free", you hear a loud foghorn. Not cool.
Poor elderly man---could be suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. Hope he hasn't had a stroke today from the embarrassment. Maybe folks will be more tolerant of the rest of us when we get to that stage of life.
Sarah, it isn't a question of tolerance. It's a question of manners, something that we, as a society, are pushing more and more to the side in favor of "tolerance."
Knowing how to act in public is what allows society to function. Manners are the outward expression of knowing how to act in public. No more than I would come to your house and just raid your refrigerator or sleep in your bed would I go to a public performance and expect others, ESPECIALLY those who are performing and who deserve my full attention, to put up with behavior that is rude and inconsiderate of those others.
The problem is that instead of being taught that there is a polite way to act, rudeness is becoming more and more accepted--and we, as a people, suffer for it. Excuses such as the one you gave are simply that, excuses--and a tacit approval of rudeness. And, sadly, one cannot accept rudeness based on a possibility of an excuse such as the one you give without giving the same acceptance to the rudeness of the teen texting at the local cinema, or the person driving erratically while on the cell phone. Who knows? Perhaps that teen is deaf and trying to talk to the friend in the next seat, or that driver is trying to call 911 due to a heart attack.
Excuses can be made for any situation; it does not make them acceptable--or appropriate.
The man with the iphone was elderly. In Oregon we don't publicly humiliate the elderly when they make mistakes. Everyone fu$ks up and leaves there cell phone on sometimes. Get off you high horses you New York snobs! It was a symphony not a brain surgery that was interrupted. What are you gonna do next... drag the elderly guy outside and beat him with a club.
Well put Cheesy.
A lot of cell phone users deserve this treatment. The elderly man perhaps is one of those users who seldom gets a call, and so didn't think of turning off the phone.
There is an excellent message to cell phone users (all of us) in this story.
Alzheimer with a cell phone?
For all the people being angry with the conductor for "humiliating" the man, read the article again. It sounds like what he basically did was stand and look sternly at the guy for a while until he got the message to turn the damn phone off. After which, the conductor apologized to the audience for even doing that much.
He was completely professional, didn't lose his temper and scream at the man, and he didn't join in the catcalls of the audience. The man with the cell phone SHOULD have turned it off the first time it rang, IMMEDIATELY. The fact that he left it on and let it go on for what sounds like a long period of time shows that not only was he insensitive and rude, he was either deaf, moronic, or just an @!$%# who thought he could get his way with the asian man in a suit. Guess again, Jim Bob Sr.
Wooo, alot of people are judging this man! Trying force your force your ethic on someone else? Trying to say you are right and he is wrong? Why do you get to be right? So, it might be distracting or rude for some and not for others......who gets to be right?
The Concert promoter, who posted the signs saying turn off cell phones.
We say we're right because we are. And it WAS distracting and rude for everyone. Nobody wants to hear somebody's cell phone ring, especially not in the middle of a concert which they paid hundreds of dollars to see. What phone call is so damn important that it can't wait a couple of hours? If a call is so important that you can't let it wait two hours, then you shouldn't be at the symphony. I'm so tired of people forcing their own personal business on everybody else. They wouldn't think of doing that if they were talking to someone in person. Nobody would turn to their neighbor in the middle of a concert and say, "So, I've been meaning to talk to you about that bid for remodeling my kitchen. . . . " Why do they think it's okay to do it if it's on the phone? To all self-important cell phone owners: we don't care about your personal business. It doesn't interest us and we don't want to hear it. We don't want to hear it in a concert, or at the movies, or in a restaurant as you prattle on and on at the table next to us . . . You're not that important -- get over yourself already.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn't do it on purpose and didn't realize that it was his, but as for your comment that those who wish to be able to use their cell phones during a concert is silly. People are paying hundreds of dollars to listen to the concert, not your cell phone.
I have to sympathize with the elderly man a little bit. I was at a financial seminar last night. I was seated in the front row and my phone started to ring in the middle while the speaker was talking. I thought it was on silent. Whether it be on accident or due to ignorance, it never is fun to have happen, for both the perpetrator or the performer. I think the conductor made the right move to observe the incident though. It's nothing personal. People just need a reminder from time to time.
I have had symphony seasons tickets for about 22 years. I try to arrive early and take my seat early. I diligently turn off my cell phone (there is usually an announcement just before the concert to do so). If I arrive late, I wait until between pieces or movements to enter...and I know not to applaud between movements. However, I worry about slipping up and forgetting to turn off my cell phone (and it then ringing) frequently. On one occasion I did not turn my cell phone off before the concert started. Fortunately, I remembered about 5 to 10 minutes in and turned it off.
The bottom line is that even the most seasoned of symphony goers with the best of intentions can slip up. If he is elderly and sitting towards the front, he may very well be a seasoned symphony goer such as myself. The elderly man whose cell phone rang during the concert may be uber remorseful, and be haunted by this for the rest of his life. If that is the case, reading some of the "piling on" I have read here could cause even more emotional harm to him.
I think the reason so many people are upset is not only did the phone ring, but it kept on ringing and ringing and ringing and he didn't bother to shut it off before he was called on it. He was just being lazy, rude, or both.
We all forget, but when the phone rings, we all go 'crap!' and hurredly shut the phone off. This man just sat there.
And that's a bad thing...???....I'm all for cell phones destroying classical music:)....What a bunch of boring crap...for me, Chuck Berry is classical music...Keith Richards rocks, Mahler sucks...what a bunch of stuffed shirts...bet you hated the Beatles too...posers, and phoneys...you don't even like that junk...you just say you do, to impress your Romney loving friends...I've played rock & roll in bars where knife fights broke out, and we just kept playing:)...as Frank Zappa said....kill ugly radio:)
going for the "troll of the year" award are we?
well said steven-21264298. i dont know what point al-364648 is trying to make other than the fact that he doesn't like classical music and probably isn't sober enough to go to a concert anyways.
Hey Al, there's an easier answer: don't go to the symphony.
Cynic-731388 this is a free country, but when its privet property and you are a guest, you have no rights. The concert hall would very much be with in its rights to kick him out, or stop the symphony. People today are so rude when it comes to using cell phones. I'm kinda tired of hear about every body'spersonal problems. Why is it tact and manners are disappearing?
What I really hate is hearing some loudmouth talking up a storm in a public restroom. I've started adding "sound effects" to the background noise, and most calls are terminated quickly....
Apparently I have 'one of those faces' because strangers insist on TALKING TO ME (this has happened at least 10-15 times in the last couple years) before we even get in the stall, and then keep talking to me. I have heard that this is not acceptable in the men's restroom and have considered going in there instead so I can pee in private! I will add background noises...good idea! Haha!
I can't believe people are actually feeling sorry for the old man. I mean really having a cell phone go off in the middle of a concert...one people actually pay for....its just flat out rude. Also, just because its a free country is absolutly no excuse for rudeness. Further more, turning off touch screen phones dont work, so take out the battery! Forgetful or not. If you are to busy at work that you can't miss a call...then dont go to a symphony. I work at a retail store....and it really upsets and annoys me when people want to check out and they are on a cell phone. Talking loud about pesonal issues in public. SHEESH!
Cell phones gotta love'em
Going to a concert. Leaving cell at home.