When the protean Johannes Brahms wrote his German Requiem, it is likely he never envisaged a group of demonstrators in St. Louis, Missouri interrupting a performance of his masterwork with a protest against the police, and even more likely that he would have let his irascible side come to the fore.
Unfortunately, Brahms is not around these days, so he wasn’t there on Saturday night to defend the right of his audience to enjoy an evening of his music undisturbed.
Attending a performance by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, more than twenty audience members that apparently had tickets held up three banners from a balcony and sang to protest the death of Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri in July. The group serenaded the audience at intermission by singing, “Justice for Mike Brown is justice for us all.”
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, some members of the audience and orchestra actually applauded the protesters. One witness tweeted of the demonstrators that they “incidentally had beautiful voices.”
Symphony publicist Erika Ebsworth-Goold, who acknowledged that the demonstrators had tickets, also sold out to political correctness, echoing that the demonstrators “had lovely voices.”
Having had their fill, the demonstrators left before they could be escorted out.
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