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Violinist stops performance to ask patron to stop recording


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An audience member in the front row of a performance by violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, performing with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was recording Mutter on her phone.  With the phone such a few feet from her face, Mutter stopped the performance and asked the woman to stop.  Instead of stopping, the woman attempted to engage Mutter in a conversation…

 

https://www.cincinnati.com/story/entertainment/2019/09/30/audience-member-escorted-out-anne-sophie-mutter-performance/3821790002/

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7 hours ago, sgcim said:

Mutter should've,kicked her ass,like Gerry Mulligan almost did once.

I think John Zorn did threw something at some pesky photographer. That almost counts as kicking ass.  Or she could have given a vitriolic lecture like Keith Jarrett. (OK, maybe that's too much.)

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I'd like for somebody to objectively interview that audience member and just let her(?) talk about why she thought any of this was a good idea, why she thought that starting a conversation with an artist onstage was going to be constructive, what kinds of events she was used to attending, all of that. Let her start talking and don't challenge anything, let her speak freely and openly. It could be most illuminating.

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A modest proposal - In the society we are beginning to live in today, soloists need to start practicing open carry when they come on stage. That's supposed to be a deterrent to anti-social behavior, right?

I mean, hey, Mutter pops off a round, that'll put a stop to any further such nonsense.

tumblr_inline_pnt96x6BvG1rfc8gd_640.jpg

 

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24 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

The phone lady is clearly in the wrong, but I kinda have to wonder if Mutter really needed to stop the concert. The article makes it seems as if she was waving the phone in Mutter's face, but how close can she really have been? It seems to me that Mutter could have ignored her and carried on with the performance, then had the woman ejected at the end of the movement.

 

The woman was “just feet away and directly in front of the star,” according to:

https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2019/09/29/review-star-violinist-remains-unruffled-after.html

 

I’ve heard of concert halls where the sweat of people on stage can land on people sitting on the first row.

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Our season tickets for DSO are third row center, and yeah, front row can easily put a hand on stage, maybe hop up on it if a person is young and limber and clueless enough (not good odds of that at a symphony concert too often).

During an intermission, the stagehands got careless and let a stand fall of the edge of the stage. It landed on a couple of (vacated) font row seats. I was able to pop over and hand it back to them, and I asked them if this was like a foul ball at Rangers game, can I keep it for a souvenir. They laughed, but that was a stage crew at intermission.

Another time, a conductor let his baton slip out of his hand and it actually landed in a patron's lap! The patron discreetly set it back on the podium, after which the conductor reached down picked it up and smiled at the patron, all without missing a beat. Theatrical!

Dallas Chamber Music Society, SMU's Caruth Auditorium, seating ends ON the stage, only recently did they start closing of the front row. There was (and still is, reall) and amaizing closeness to the performers if you get there early enough to get down there.

All this to say, yes, I have no problem imagining that this patron was getting up close and personal.

Yeah, look at this:

MusicHallPostRen.jpg

 

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34 minutes ago, JSngry said:

 

Another time, a conductor let his baton slip out of his hand and it actually landed in a patron's lap! The patron discreetly set it back on the podium, after which the conductor reached down picked it up and smiled at the patron, all without missing a beat. Theatrical!

 

I take it that was at a venue with no elevated stage because at the places I've been you'd need to be 8 feet tall to discreetly set a baton back on the podium. And no 8 footer is discreet in anything they do.

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The Meyerson stage comes up to about my shoulder level, so, about 5 feet elevation. And the backside of podium (which itself is (re)movable) usually comes almost to the edge of the stage, if not actually to it. They sometimes have a rail up, actually. Not that I've ever seen anybody come close to falling off it backwards, but there it is, just in case, I guess.

Here it is w/o rail. You can see how intimate it can be:

348s.jpg

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4 hours ago, JSngry said:

A modest proposal - In the society we are beginning to live in today, soloists need to start practicing open carry when they come on stage. That's supposed to be a deterrent to anti-social behavior, right?

I mean, hey, Mutter pops off a round, that'll put a stop to any further such nonsense.

tumblr_inline_pnt96x6BvG1rfc8gd_640.jpg

 

Looks like another good idea for a movie. We could either make a Sci-Fi flick about classical musicians fighting aliens who are trying to conquer earth by disrupting violin concertos, or somehow tie it in with the Mulligan movie about him and Gail Madden's cross-country hitchhike. 

The ending would probably be at The Haig, where instead of Mulligan asking the interrupter to step outside with him (which really happened), he launches a bazooka from the bell of his baritone, obliterating said interrupter (and also the entire club), and then flash the words, "Is Jazz Dead?", for our big message. I'll be over at 1;30 pm  with the contracts...

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4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Get that Leo P guy & Grace Kelly to play Mulligan and Madden as dancing instrumental commandos fighting an intergalactic jihad and dude...the idea sells itself.

LOL! During their country-wide hitchhike they read The Fountainhead, and were so taken by it that GM thought he was Gary Cooper and Gail Madden thought she was Patricia Neal!

Any two scientologist male and female actors would do.

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The issue isn't  only whether the woman was interfering with the performance. It's that she was, in effect, stealing Mutter's music making for her own use -- potentially, as has been the case countless times, to sell (i.e. "pirate") her recording of Mutter's performance. Surely you can see how that injures Mutter or anyone else in her position.

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26 minutes ago, Captain Howdy said:

Audience recording never hurt the Grateful Dead.

 Not even comparable. The GD permitted and encouraged it as long as the tapers didn't use it for comercial purposes. This woman never had permission to do so and who knows what use she planned to make it, not to mention Mutter didn't want her to do so. You go to any performance and taping is not allowed. That's not hard to understand.  

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I’m sure she could have continued with the performance if she wanted to, but if the transgressor with the phone was literally in her direct and close line of site, I could see where that might be distracting or unnerving enough that any performer in that kind of venue might well choose to interrupt the performance to stop the distraction.

This isn’t some rock concert, or coffee house performance. I’m willing to give Mutter the benefit of the doubt here. She’s the one immediately in the spotlight, and if she’d rather not see some unflatteringly shot recording of her performance becoming something uploaded to YouTube and available on view for years to come, then she’s well within her right to take action.

I would certainly find something like that distracting, and given the Expected social contract, norms, and stated rules/regs of the performance venue and backing band, I’m not at all surprised that she stopped the show as she did.

Perhaps stopping between movements might have been less impactful on the audience, but if I had been there, I would have immediately sided with the performer.

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1 hour ago, Captain Howdy said:

It is comparable, because Larry said "Surely you can see how that injures Mutter or anyone else in her position." We're talking about financial injury, not permission or encouragement. It doesn't matter what the woman intended to do with the recording; what matters is what she could do with it realistically . Maybe she intended to sell it on eBay, but if there's no market for shitty audience recordings, her intentions are moot.

Yes, the bootlegger was clearly violating the house rule against recording, but Mutter had choices to make about how to handle it. As I said, she could have waited until the end of the movement. She also said, “Either I will leave, or you will put away your phone and recording device,” suggesting that she was willing to punish the entire audience for the actions of one person. Is that fair? 

First -- bootleg or pirate tapings of classical concerts and opera performances abound and readily make their way onto commercial recordings or videos that are then sold for good money. You must not hang around websites like Berkshire Record Outlet, where such recordings can be found in abundance; they're on Amazon and similar sites too. Second -- you are aware that Mutter is a commercial recording artist whose recording of, say, the Beethoven Violin Concerto will sell so many units, for which she probably will be paid so much per unit sold; she also might be paid a sum up front/in advance, but that sum would be dependent on the label's expectation of how many units she will sell down the road. Obviously a recording made by an audience member of her playing that same work that then makes its way onto a sold in broad daylight bootleg release will cut into the number of units of Mutter's legitimate recording of that work that are sold, and, one way or another, this will reduce the amount of compensation she has received or will receive for her work. This by you is OK?

As for Mutter punishing an entire audience for the actions of one person, it was that person's actions, not Mutter's, that led to a halt in the performance. No clearly forbidden recording by the audience member, no problem.

BTW, as someone I think inquired about above, I would love to know what that entitled audience member said to Mutter in an attempt to justify her behavior.

Finally, your assumption that such an audience recording must be "shitty" is mistaken. For one thing, it depends on the quality of the recording device, not its size; for another,  it's quite possible, and frequently done, for two people in cahoots, seated in appropriately separated seats, to record the same performance and then combine the two recordings to yield a perfectly good stereo result.

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well, according to what I read, Mutter continued the concert after the incident so nobody except for that one person was robbed of their $130, plus: people paid for seeing a diva so what did they expect, plus: I read elsewhere that the person was making a film recording, not just audio, which is something I tend to find distracting as a listener as well, this sea of phones in front of you, all preparing crappy films of the concert... I won't blame anybody for discouraging that type of behavior

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That woman with her phone sure had some nerve ...

Amazing that nobody else in the audience (particularly those others up front) callesd her to order in no uncertain terms at once when she started trying to argue with Mutter. Or did she surround herself with like minds in neighboring seats to shroud her off? As an audience member anywhere near her I'd certainly have frowned on this kind of behavior in a concert of CLASSICAL music and in THAT setting.

I'd certainly would have liked to see what would have happened if someone in a neighboring seat would have casually waved his hand on front of the camera eye of her phone - and more than once. :lol: That motion could have been done as quite a natural sign of appreciation towards the stage - "what, there's a camera on? Did I know? Do I care? What's the idea of a camera there anyway?" :g

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Berkshire Record Outlet

That's where I bought my first album ever.  I must have been between 11-13 years old.  The store was on route 7 in Lee, MA in what I remember to be a barn next to a Motel.  I was overwhelmed by all the choices but ended up with a Hot Tuna album mostly because the artwork was cool.    I had no idea this place is still in business, it's no longer in the original location.

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6 hours ago, Captain Howdy said:

No I don't hang around BRO; their site is too 1997 for my taste -- or was; is the update a big improvement?

You're cutting off your ears to your taste.

And probably saving a lot of money in the process too, but...

Oh yeah, what really happened here?

  • Audience member distracted featured performer by conspicuously violating explicit policies of venue
  • Said performer stopped performance and allowed the proper authorities to remove the offender
  • Said performer then resumed performance

What didn't happen:

  • Other audience members did not escalate/devolve into a hissy fit of pushing/showing/yelling either pro or con towards the offending audience member
  • Artist did not engage or otherwise "legitimize" the offending audience member
  • Offending audience member did not pull a Don't Taze Me, Bro on the way out

Sounds like the "system" worked as intended and everybody avoided the increasingly typical post-Social Media Revolution Meltdown Bullshits.

Yay!

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