Don't forget to turn off your phone when you go to the New York Philharmonic...because if it starts ringing they will stop the show. No, really! At last night's performance of Mahler's Ninth, a not-so-gentleman's iPhone (using the "marimba" ringtone) went off multiple times during the piece's final movement. Finally—just 13 bars before the end of the score—Music Director Alan Gilbert lost it and cut the orchestra:
"Mr. Gilbert was visibly annoyed by the persistent ring-tone, so much that he quietly cut the orchestra," the concert-goer reports. She related how the orchestra's music director turned on the podium towards the offender. The pause lasted a good "three or four minutes. It might have been two. It seemed long."
Mr. Gilbert asked the man, sitting in front of the concert-master: "Are you finished?" The man didn't respond.
"Fine, we'll wait," Mr. Gilbert said.
And they did! Finally—after some booing, catcalling and unfriendly slow clapping—Gilbert asked the man if he'd turned off his phone, and the man nodded and nodded again when asked if it wouldn't go off again. Then, before starting the music again, Gilbert addressed the audience and reportedly said: "I apologize. Usually, when there's a disturbance like this, it is best to ignore it, because addressing it is sometimes worse than the disturbance itself. But this was so egregious that I could not allow it." Then the performance resumed and Gilbert became our new hero.
[via The Awl]
