A toddler exposes issues about kids at classical music concerts.

This story is excerpted from an article that was originally published on July 14, 2016.

Last May, a joint performance by Ensemble Monterey Chamber Orchestra and Cantiamo! Cabrillo at the Carmel Mission promised beautiful and exultant music in a program titled “Fanfare.” I suggested to my wife that we take our 2-year-old boy, expecting he would enjoy the music – or fall asleep.

The night of the concert, we sat in the back pew. The seven or so rows ahead of us were nearly empty. The orchestra and choir occupied the altar of the mission from where they filled the basilica with the sublime sounds of Monteverdi, Purcell, Strauss and others. Our child ate it up. Great.

Then he began to investigate nearby objects, tried to “talk” to us (the music mostly obscured this), and after the crescendo of one song, said, “Ooh. Big.” A couple sitting in front of us didn’t complain, but we intervened with paper, pencil and a book. It worked for awhile, but when the remedy waned, my wife took him outside (the doors were open) to roam the grounds until intermission.

After intermission, as the choir walked down the aisle to the altar – during a quiet lull – the choir director turned to us and audibly and visibly shushed my son.

My wife and I looked at each other like, “Did that just happen?” Then an usher came up behind us and asked, upon orders given to her, if we could take our child outside, or allow them to.

We opted for a third solution. We left.

A few days later, I asked Cantiamo! Cabrillo Music Director Cheryl Anderson, the one who shushed us, for her take.

“Loud and full and resonant is great, and to balance that sound we chose to interject some a cappella works [into the program] to give the ear a full menu to satisfy,” she wrote by email. “The Rihards Dubra unaccompanied work we did, Oculus non vidit, is hugely impactful on the audience because of its immense beauty, its poignant dissonances, its wide-ranging dynamics, its surprising ending of aleatory risen to a fever pitch and followed by shocking silence.

“Unfortunately it was during the fever-pitched ending and immediate silence that the child’s vocalization occurred,” she says.

That would be the “Ooh. Big.” She says that at intermission audience members commented on my son’s “vocalization,” and that at the start of the second half she heard him beginning to be fussy, and could not pause to discuss it, so shushed him. Ironically, my wife and I perceived the shush was louder than any sound our son had made, and less consistent with the spirit of the music. And because Anderson had already ordered an usher to ask us to remove him, it seemed moot and punitive.

Cathleen Gable, concert manager for the Carmel Mission, says that Anderson has been “very gracious” to her, and she’s enjoyed a good working relationship with Cantiamo! Cabrillo. But she approached us at the parking lot to invite us to stay.

“I asked [three people] if your son had been disruptive and they told me ‘no,’” she observes. “I felt, as facility manager, I could invite you back into the mission.”

We decided to go home. Our invitation to enjoy the concert, it seemed, had been revoked.

But it touched off a sequence of questions.

Is it appropriate to bring kids to classical music concerts? What if they are still and quiet? If they make noise or fidget, how much is acceptable? When adults cough, snore, talk, let cell phones buzz, or clap out of turn, should they be asked to leave? At what point do the rules and protocol inhibit enjoyment – even attendance?

Rob Klevan has been a music educator for more than 42 years with the Monterey Jazz Festival, York School, CSU Monterey Bay and elsewhere. He’s also conducted numerous concerts and performed at Carnegie Hall.

“I feel that for the sake of a sane and civilized society, it is extremely important to keep the arts alive,” he says. “The best way to perpetuate the arts is to expose our children at an early age. If [arts] organizations hope to survive, they must find a way to attract younger audiences.”