The Nashville Symphony does not allow concert-goers to videotape or audiotape its concerts. That’s quite normal for most performing arts nowadays, regardless of genre. It is also in line with the symphony musicians’ union contracts, which specify that they are to be paid extra when they perform for a recording.

When the symphony played in Shelbyville, the programs clearly specified that there was to be no audio or video recording. When one of the concert sponsors delivered the welcoming remarks for the concert, he repeated the point.

Tonight, I was back in Calsonic Arena, at the Spring Fun Show, selling Bedford County Bicentennial T-shirts (I’m a member of the Bicentennial organizing committee). A fellow working in the vendor booth next to me recognized me as someone who’d been involved with the symphony concert. He then proceeded to complain that he’d been trying to videotape his child’s performance with the Community High School Wind Symphony when someone from the [Nashville] symphony came and asked him to stop. He first said that they threatened to arrest him, but as he recounted the conversation in more detail that seemed to be a topic he, not the symphony, had raised (as in, “What are you going to do about it — have me arrested?”).

This man admitted in passing that the chance for his child to play in tandem with the [Nashville] symphony was an exciting and once-in-a-lifetime experience. But it never occurred to him that, in return, he owed the symphony the common courtesy of obeying its reasonable, clearly posted and easy-to-understand ground rules.

UPDATE: I didn’t word this post clearly enough first time around, especially since the post has been linked and people will read it who didn’t read my earlier blathering about the event. The event I was describing was the Nashville Symphony’s annual concert in Shelbyville. Each year, we have a youth or amateur adult orchestra as a guest artist; this year, it was the band from one of our local high schools (performing as the “Community High School Wind Symphony,” which could cause some confusion when I refer to “the symphony”). The band got to perform several numbers on its own and then two numbers where it performed along with the Nashville Symphony. I suspect that the conflict occurred during one of those two numbers, since the father would have been taping the Nashville Symphony along with the high school band.