I don't do classical gigs, but my rock gigs are always booked through email these days. Nobody wants to talk anymore.

Same for my gigs, but texts work too.

It seems to me you felt the conductor was the one out of line. I came to this conclusion after you called him a d***. Of course, I'm clueless and probably don't have the faintest idea of what I'm talking about.

I had to call someone a d*** (for all the nonsense being said in this thread), if I were to call you a d***, you'd probably ping your friends in high places. Didn't want that.

Cell phones should simply be prohibited from concert halls.
Take your pick: the concert or the phone. Not both.

I can't take 4 ounces of shampoo onto an airplane. It must be left behind.
So I see no hardship in leaving the phone behind at a concert.

TSA searches at the door would be obnoxious and expensive. So I propose an honor system ... punishable upon violation. You screw up, you're thrown out. No refund. Just my boot print on your butt.

WOW! It's on Yahoo news!
Yahoo News Article

Could you edit your post to include only the link? It's messing up the forum view.


Thanks!

I wonder if a behind-the-scenes bidding war is going on between news outlets over who gets the scoop and publishes the offender's name--- surely it is known. Sometimes those fifteen minutes of fame are dearly bought. Silence is also sometimes bought for a high price, although blackmailers are notoriously unreliable business partners.

Well, as long as you are entertaining an audience of hundreds or even thousands of (unfortunately) imperfect human beings, there are absolutely going to be issues occasionally. I would say that if you can't deal with that possibility you are in the wrong business.

There appear to be many very holy people here, at least they think they are.

Follow-up:

Here's a wonderful video that's gone viral (1.2 million views on youtube so far). I think we can at least agree that this is a great way of handling a cell phone interruption. Lukáš Kmiť, violin.

-J

A class act!

I haven't read all of this very long thread, so maybe the NYT's recent interview with the man in question has already been covered. Anyway, it goes something like this: the man had a new phone with which he was unfamiliar. Unbeknown to him, it had an alarm in it which would ring even if the phone had been turned off, and the alarm would continue to ring until it had been manually turned off. The man knew none of this at the time it went off, but he knew he had turned his phone off. So he just sat there, paralyzed, not knowing what to do, and probably thinking it would eventually turn off by itself. It may have seemed to him, at the time, that his best bet was to sit still, in silent denial that it was his phone, and wait for the situation to go away by itself.

It's sort of like the situation some of us have found ourselves in when we let go with a silent, but highly gaseous flatulence bomb, and we're in a crowd of people, or even friends, and we can't escape. What do you do? You sit there in silence, and when everyone starts looking around and sniffing the air, you look around and sniff the air too.

It could have happened to any of us.

Tomasino

sounds like a viola not a violin to me, no?. I don't like his ring tone variations or his playing.

His form was appaling, and no one even answered!

I tested my phone again. (It's an oldish Nokia.) If the alarm is set to ring, it will ring even if the phone is turned fully off (not turned to silent). For that reason I never use the alarm - I would just be too worried in concerts!

You've found Chopin's "lost" first draft of the Fantasy Opus 49 !!! Guess he decided it was too visionary for his audiences.