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iPhone ringtone brings NY Philharmonic to a halt

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NEW YORK, Jan 13 – A New York Philharmonic music fan’s cell phone added a few extra tones to a concert this week that no one appreciated — especially the orchestra’s exasperated conductor.

As the orchestra played the soft finale to Mahler’s Symphony No. 9, the iPhone of a man seated near the front jangled to life, its ringtone playing a marimba.

The conductor, Alan Gilbert, took the unusual step of stopping the symphony to direct a disapproving glare and a reprimand at the audience member.

“It was actually the loudest thing in the hall,” Gilbert said in a television interview. “Something had to be done.”

While the ringtone continued, some members of the audience shouted, “Get out” and “Kick him out.”

Gilbert said normally he would never stop a concert but the volume and long duration of the ringtone made him think, “Okay, what do we do? We have to finish this piece somehow.”

The offender, a man in his sixties who has not been identified, fumbled with his newly acquired gadget until it was silenced.

He told the New York Times it took him a while to realize he was the one holding the offending phone.

His company had given him the device a day earlier, and he did not know the alarm clock on it was set, he said.

“You can imagine how devastating it is to know you had a hand in that,” he said. “It’s horrible, horrible. I hope the people at that performance and members of the orchestra can certainly forgive me for this whole event.”

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“I apologize to the whole audience.”

Since then, the incident has been reported widely on music blogs.

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