Rock Center with Brian Williams, an NBC news show, had a charming little feature tonight on the issue of cellphones interrupting theater shows and classical performances. There's an interview with Alan Gilbert on the subject of the famous Mahler Ninth marimba incident (weirdly, Barber's School for Scandal Overture replaces Mahler in the accompanying footage), and none other than Marc-André Hamelin makes a brief appearance, performing his "Ringtone Waltz." A longer interview with Hamelin can be found online. It was a relief to find that the reporting did not traffic in stereotypes of Stuffy Classical Snobs. Maybe NBC can now move on from covering interruptions of classical music to covering classical music itself. It has, after all, done so in the past.
