Cell Phone Etiquette

[sairose]

Originally posted by aephi alum
Also, if you're in a concert hall, for pity's sake turn off your cell phone!! If you are expecting an emergency call, set your phone to vibrate and step out if it rings, or tell the person who might be calling you to call the concert hall instead and have an usher fetch you.

A few months back, I was at Lincoln Center enjoying a concert when someone's cell phone rang mid-concerto. This was despite the slide projected before the performance, informing the audience that cell phones and pagers should be turned off. (I will not even comment on the number of people who seemed to think jeans and t-shirts were appropriate concert-going attire. )

There was an ad (I think it ran last year?) set in an opera house, where someone's cell phone rang mid-aria (not to mention off-key to the aria), and the soprano picked up a spear and hurled it through the guy's cell.

THANK YOU, aephi alum!!!!!!!!!! I was gonna post that if someone else hadn't.

Lemme tell ya. I am a music major, and this is the one thing you can do to royally piss me off. I have been to peoples senior recitals when someone's PHONE WENT OFF. Maybe to a non-musician, you won't understand so much WHY this is so wrong. Well, I'll tell ya. When I'm on stage making music, I'm totally, completely focused on it and ONLY it--putting my all into the music I am creating. I am in a different state of mind, and there's nothing that breaks me from that then a DAMN CELL PHONE. And the audience is also in a different state of mind, listening to my music, getting emotions from it, and there goes a phone.

My Senior Recital is this March, and I'll tell you right now, if anyone's phone goes off, I will announce between numbers to turn it off. Not EVEN kidding.

Oh, and here's a good one. When my choir sang in Carnegie Hall during spring break, phones went off at least 5 times. We were beyond pissed.

Sorry for the rant! LOL BUt it's so rude to performers.