Cell phones and performances (Part 1)

Yesterday, the “smart” clock in our house changed to daylight savings time one week early. As a result, while I was getting ready, my wife rushed to inform me that we were running on the wrong time and hopelessly late for church. Nevertheless, we left as soon as we could and got to church maybe 30 minutes late. Almost as soon as I sat down, something embarrassing happened: my cell phone started ringing.

The fact is that during the rush to get to church, the idea of silencing my cell phone never occurred to me. To make matters worse, my cell phone ringtone is not exactly what you would consider subdued and we were in a very traditional church.

They were kind enough to ignore my sin though. All was well.

I contrast their response to this response. (If you don’t see the video below, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAaU8yPXA1A)

It was highly ironic that my cell phone went off in church yesterday because I had just posted this video to my Facebook page and asked for comments. In case you wonder, my position was (and still is) that the performer did not handle this well. Over on Facebook, the comments are about 50-50 between agreeing with me and stating that the cell phone offender got what he/she deserved.

No one argues that the person with the cell phone did not make a mistake and this should not have happened. My interest is not in cell phone offender but rather in the response of the performer. In a nutshell, here are some conclusions I draw:

1) No one knows exactly why the cell phone went off or what is going on in the life of the offender. Judging them harshly is silly and let’s face it, there are a lot worse mistakes that one can make. I am pretty sure I make worse mistakes than that several times a day. Our society seems to want to forgive a lot of sins but for some reason, not this one? That makes no sense to me and I say that as a performer myself.

2) It is not the place of a performer to correct members of the audience. The audience is made up of customers who have often paid money to attend. Even if they have not paid money, they still invested their time to come. They should be treated with respect unless something really egregious takes place.

3) Since the performer responded, his actions are every bit as open to criticism as the cell phone offender’s offense. He is responsible for his reaction and he is no longer just a victim.

So who is more rude: someone who for whatever reason fails to turn off a cell phone or a performer who takes it upon himself to publicly humiliate an audience member? While I don’t know exactly why the cell phone was not turned off, I think that the performer’s behavior was way worse.

I was at a church many years ago that had a culture where it was considered acceptable to talk during the offertory. Probably, from a proportional standpoint, no three minutes of a church service gets more effort and work than the offertory. Yet, the poor pianists (including me) would play our offertories while people chatted. I am not going to lie; it bothered me. Eventually, I just learned to deal with it. And at no point did I or any other pianist decide to stop and correct the audience. We knew that was not our job.

It was not the job of this performer either.

There are some interesting underlying factors at play here that I want to talk about. In my opinion, this performer demonstrates a big reason why the classical music industry is in such trouble. But that is a subject for the next post which I will get up soon.