Larry Johnson of South Florida Classical Review reported that at a New World Symphony concert in Miami earlier this month "Michael Tilson Thomas told a woman sitting near the stage with a child in her lap that she was distracting him and asked her to leave ... The child was apparently sleeping noiselessly on the woman’s lap."
There have been various reports on the incident since the story went viral, leading to MTT's own take:
The conductor said that he was trying to prevent the performance of Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2 with Yefim Bronfman last Friday at New World Center from being disrupted. A woman was sitting with her nine-year-old daughter directly in his line of vision and, he said, the girl was jumping about during the performance of Dawn and Siegfried’s Rhine Journey by Wagner on the first half, which was led by NWS conducting fellow Christian Reif. He said he was worried that the quiet lyricism of the Brahms concerto’s third movement would be broken up by the girl’s jumpiness.“The little girl was restless and moving around and I was just afraid what would happen in the Adagio,” said the conductor in a phone call on Wednesday. “Our cellist Rosanna Butterfield had worked so hard all week on her solo. I just didn’t want to see it ruined.”
He said rather than take a chance, between the second and third movements he asked the woman to move to a different seat. He emphasized that he never asked her to leave the concert.
“It’s one of those situations when you have to make a decision quickly. I made the call to ask her to move — which I did quietly and courteously. I was surprised when she left the hall.”
Among comments on the incident:
We were at this concert, which was sublime except for the incident being discussed. Our seats are directly behind the conductor, in row BB. Seated directly across from us in the first row of the risers was a well-dressed woman with her well-behaved daughter, who appeared to be around 10 or 11 years old.It is important to point out that they were the only people in that row, and were, therefore, “close up and personal” vis-a-vis MTT. It is true that the daughter had her head in her mom’s lap for part of the evening, but neither she nor her mom were creating any disturbance at all.