Choose Charleston

I attended an oven the other night.

Normally, I would say that I went to a concert, but the Charleston Music Hall was so incredibly hot. The Charleston Symphony performed wonderfully, but it must have been 80 degrees. During intermission, we were told that the heat had been turned off, but no one opened the doors, because the temperature did not drop noticably.

As part of the CSO’s Casual Classics series, Resident Conductor, Scott Terrell led a pared down orchestra in a program called “Something Old/Something New. It featured Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances, Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen, Kreisler’s Liebeslied and Stravinsky’s Suite from Pulcinella. Guest soloist was Yuriy Bekker, Charleston Symphony Archestra’s new Concertmaster.

The concert was great, but once again, I was disturbed by poor etiquette. No one should be allowed to enter once the performance has started until there is a break in the music (during intermission or between pieces, not movements). On this particular evening, the usher escorted a latecomer in and indicated her seat after the first musical selection had begun. Not only was this a distraction, but she then noisily clopped to her seat and mere moments later, her cell phone went off.

Lest someone think I am picking on Charleston, my wife and I visited New York last fall and enjoyed a wonderful performance of the NY Philharmonic. Unfortunately, during one piece a cell phone went off there was well. I couldn’t understand why I continued to hear the classical music ring tone for so long until we realized that the phone was on stage. I wonder if that musician is still employed.