An angry neighbor stopped the classical open-air festival Terrazza in the garden of the Salons Sint-Niklaas for half an hour on Sunday by playing loud music from his window. He was eventually arrested by the police, after which calm returned.
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The Shakti String Quartet was working on its last two songs just before 4 pm, when Motörhead’s heavy metal song Ace Of Spades suddenly reverberated over the entire garden of the Salon. A neighbor of the classical music festival turned out to have put his stereo in his window and turned the volume up to ten. The result was that the concert of the string quartet could no longer be heard, and both the audience and the artists could not do anything but listen to their neighbor’s DJ set.
‘He had already provoked us during the rehearsal of the first group earlier in the day by playing loud music’, say organizers Annelies De Graeve, Goeleke De Wit and Tim Haerinck. ‘He called us later himself and asked us to stop with our concerts, and not to do any more bis numbers. When we finished the performance anyway, the neighbor started his own music program.’
Standing ovation
First he played heavy metal, then classical songs followed. “Our audience and the artists made the most of it during the forced break,” the organizers said. ‘The string quartet played one of the classic songs that the neighbor played, and the audience rewarded them with a standing ovation. Their applause drowned out the neighbor’s music. We were moved by the way everyone handled this unexpected situation.’
The police were called to the scene immediately after the start of his DJ set. After half an hour they finally managed to calm the neighbor and stop the music. The man, who used to run a cafe nearby, turned out to have turned up his stereo deliberately out of dissatisfaction with the ‘noise nuisance’ of the festival. The police had already knocked on his door earlier that day. He was administratively detained. Then peace returned and the string quartet could finish its last songs undisturbed.
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