Eternal Return Calls

Wednesday 25 January 2012

“Wacky” classical music stories are almost as tedious as golfing jokes, and this year we’ve already endured two uproarious stories about classical gigs disrupted by mobile phones. O tempora! O mores!

Last night I was listening to a concert recorded in Phill Niblock’s loft in SoHo in 1979. Tom Johnson was performing his piece Nine Bells, for suspended fire alarm gongs. Right at the very end of the piece, a telephone in the room starts to ring. I’m talking one of those old-school Universal Telephone style BRRRRINGGGs. Nobody is outraged and Johnson doesn’t imitate the phone, even though he is ideally equipped to do so.