Page 238 - FINAL_The Sixteen Coverage Book 40th Anniversary Year

president of Lincoln Center, William Schuman, who talked about the arts as ‘an antidote to our

automated age’...and something that serves as ‘a creative illumination to counteract the push-
button emptiness of our mechanized lives.’ This is back in 1966! At the same time, the White Light
Festival is 10 years old this year, and Jane Moss, our artistic director, really conceived the festival

as a way into the human experience. The third thing is the link between social media and
depression and loneliness. And so we reached out to Yondr—we think we’re the first classical

performances to use the technology.”

At least for now, giving up your phone at Lincoln Center is a suggestion, not a requirement, and
Yondr will only be used sporadically until audience feedback can be studied—though the early

rollout seems to be a success. At the White Light Festival concert I attended—Harry Christophers
conducting the Britten Sinfonia and the Sixteen choir in the U.S. premiere of James MacMillan’s
haunting new Stabat Mater (the first musical work to be live-streamed from the Sistine Chapel)—

most audience members seemed to surrender their phones, though the woman next to me
continued to use hers—to read an electronic version of the Bible, I couldn’t help but notice—right

up until the moment the lights dimmed and the performers took the stage.

After the performance I asked Christophers, who’s conducted thousands of performances around
the world over four decades, how often he’s been interrupted by an errant phone call. “One

concert in four,” he says. “Invariably in the silent part.” He is far from amused. “It’s the same as
someone throwing trash out the window. Part of me despairs—why can’t people simply get into
the habit of turning their phones off? It’s not terribly difficult.”

Johnson told me about attending a recent opening night performance of the New York

Philharmonic when an Amber Alert reverberated from cell phones throughout the concert hall. “At
first I thought, That can’t be part of the symphony, can it?” she remembered. “You might think that

people who are disposed to attend a classical music performance might already be attuned to the
need to turn their phones off—you’d be wrong.”

Back at Alice Tully Hall watching Christophers wield his baton, I had no such worries. Those who

didn’t surrender their phones to Yondr pouches seemed to have done the right thing—though that
didn’t prevent my concert experience from being interrupted. At the end of an introductory piece by
MacMillan, the achingly beautiful Miserere, based on a psalm asking God for mercy and

forgiveness, an odd sound, distinctly non-electronic, reverberated from the seats directly behind
me. I couldn’t resist a quick pivot for a scolding snare—and discovered the source of this

disturbance to be...a Catholic priest, snoring. Is nothing sacred?

237