This is a contenious issue, I know, and one that has been in the news quite a bit recently.

As a musician - and has an audience member - cell phones (or other electronics) drive me nuts.  There is something about hearing a cell phone go off the middle of a concert that is particularly obnoxious, moreso (to me at least) than hear a cough, or a candy wrapper, or even the whine of a hearing aid that's turned up to 11.  Why?  First of all, cell phone rings are not subtle.  There is no graceful start of a phrase, no crescendo into it, no gentle entrance.  Instead, one is confronted with an immediate, electronic sound.  Often - at least in "classical" music concerts, and acoustic concerts in general - the sound of a cellphone is so irritating because its timbre is so different from what is being performed.  It is not "acoustic" in any traditional sense of the world - the tones, whether a simple standard "ring" or a tune like the Nokia signature ring tone, are extraordinarily synthesized sounds, played in perfect syncronisation; in other words, the total opposite of what is likely going on on stage.

The other part of the cellphone thing that bothers me is a simple lack of common courtesy.  Without turning this into a long rant on everyday manners, I firmly believe that turning off your cell phone (or at least switching it to vibrate/silent/airplane mode) is a sign of respect:  respect for the performers, who are there to do their best to entertain you with whatever skills and resources they have, and respect for the other audience members, who are there for the experience of live music.  For many people, hearing live music is still a "special occasion" - it's something different from the now more common experience of hearing music via a computer, ipod, or radio.  It's more than just listening - it's an experience, a shared time of acknowledgement that music and art is a important part of life.  It's also an escape - a chance to retreat from every day details, from stresses, from jobs, from communication with the outside world.  Hearing a cell phone ring, especially in the middle of a quite piece, which Murphy's law says is when it's mostly likely to happen, can take much of that away in an instant, and it can never quite be brought back.

(I should note too that ringing cell phones aren't the only way of distracting both audience and performers.  TorQ played a concert recently where a photographer was so intent on getting good photos of us that she continually stood in front of audience members - who were seated - and took multiple photos in a row with full flash from about 10 feet away during the performance.  They then proceeded to look through the photos that were taken on their nice digital camera.  As well as causing a distracting glow, every time she viewed another photo, there was a small beeping sound.  Needless to say, there were more than a few people at intermission who suggested to the photographer that perhaps they'd taken enough pictures by that point.)

In any case, the question for the perfomer is:  how do you deal with these distractions?  Many distractions just require you to plow through as best as possible, and not acknowledge it (thereby trying to minimize its distractive power).  If the setting is more informal, sometimes it's possible to make light of it, to make everyone feel a little more relaxed.  Sometimes, if the distraction is extreme, it might be necessary to stop the performance entirely (not a fun thing for performers or audience members, surely).

Perhaps the most creative response, however, is shown in the video below.  Lukas Kmit, a Slovakian violist, heard the Nokia ringtone during his concert and improvised a response.  Though he's clearly annoyed, it was an incredibly classy response to a less-than-classy interruption.

I have an iPhone, and I know many of my friends and colleagues have smart phones too.  They are fantastic devices for doing work on the go, for entertainment, and for feeling connected.  But please, turn off those ringers before going into any performance that doesn't involve thousands of watts of amplified sound!

-jamie