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Annoying iPhone user silences New York Philharmonic Orchestra

Annoying iPhone user silences New York Philharmonic Orchestra

A ringing iPhone belonging to a member of the audience nearly stopped a concert of the New York Philharmonic at the Lincoln Center in New York City earlier this week.

The marimba sound from the ringing iPhone came at a most inopportune moment while Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was being played, MSNBC reported.

Conductor Alan Gilbert halted the performance when the ring tone persisted, while other members of the audience calling for the offending phone’s owner to be banished from the concert, or to pay a $1,000 fine, the report said.

Gilbert turned to the iPhone’s owner, who was seated close to the front of the hall, and “waited” until the man confirmed his gadget was off.

The conductor then apologized to the audience, saying he would have ignored the disturbance but the ringing was “so egregious that I could not allow it.”

“The symphony ends incredibly quietly so there was literally no way that we could go on. 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…,” he said in an interview with NBC News.

While the concert eventually resumed, members of the audience gave the iPhone owner a piece of their mind during the lull.

During the pause, the MSNBC report said some in the audience reportedly called for blood, shouting: “Kick him out!” and “$1,000 fine!”

A blog post by writer-critic Paul Pelkonen noted the final movement of the symphony (marked Adagio: Very Slowly and Restrained) is a long slow meditation on death that eventually fades to silence.

It said the work has special significance at the New York Philharmonic, an orchestra that Mahler conducted in the last years of his life.

[Thanks: http://www.gmanetwork.com]

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