God would not have been happy.
Poet Brian Turner gave a spirited and thoroughly entertaining reading at St Paul's Cathedral at lunchtime yesterday.
"If anyone had told me, 50 years ago when I started writing poetry, that I'd be standing up here one day, I'd have said they were crazy," he said.
The bard lulled the crowd with his dulcet delivery and expressive imagery, punctuated with regular dollops of humour, which kept the audience chuckling.
The reading mined material old and new, including pieces from his latest collection, Elemental: Central Otago Poems.
He also pulled out some personal favourites, such as Sky.
"If the sky knew half of what we're doing down here. It would be stricken, inconsolable. And we would have nothing but rain."
It was really quite wonderous listening to Turner read his works.
Many members of the audience reclined in the pews with eyes closed and gentle smiles.
Even the Labrador guide dog under the pew in front of me was blissfully relaxed.
Then the moment was shattered.
A mobile phone stridently and outrageously burst into life, before the mortified and panic-stricken woman sitting next to me managed to dig the offending instrument out.
You had to feel sorry for her.
But, I felt a lot sorrier for the 200-odd people who had paid $15 to be there.
Please, turn your phones off before you set foot in a venue.
Nothing destroys the magic and precious suspended reality of a live performance like a mobile phone.
Guitarist and percussionist Carlos Navae leads a musical expedition through Latin America in St Paul's at 1pm today, before another highly-successful series wraps up.
The programme is always well-attended and it is a fantastic venue for lunchtime concerts.
And if you were wondering what the big blue curtain in the cathedral is hiding, well, all will be revealed on the final day of the festival.
Dunedin stained glass window artist Peter Mackenzie started work on a new window a year ago and it will see daylight for the first time at 11.45am on Sunday.
The 26-panel stained glass window features St Paul and St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, who have been modelled on some well-known New Zealanders.
The window will also be consecrated at a 7pm evensong on Sunday.
Three very different new shows open today.
The puppet show Hatched will be cracked at the Fortune Theatre at 6.30pm and the magnificent Brazilian dancers and musicians of Bale Floclorico de Bahia will be at the Regent at 8pm in Bahia of all Colours. I suspect anyone who saw the troupe at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery kapa haka welcome on Wednesday will already have their tickets.
It should be one of the undoubted highlights of this year's festival.
The Spooky Men's Chorale play up at the Kings and Queens Performance Arts Centre from 8pm.
The band produced the We can grow beards if we want to theme in the recent Speight's Breweries "Man Like Natural" television advertisements.
Several of this year's acts now head up the road to the Nelson Arts Festival, which starts today, including Amadeus Leopold, H'Sao and Le Vent Du Nord.
Later, it's Subject2Change at the Late Night Festival Club, from 10pm to midnight in the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.
