"Viola Smackdown" in San Francisco

We've heard of guitar players hurling their axe down the stage in fury, or simply for dramatic effect.  Never heard of a viola player doing it.  In a fit of rage over heckling, violist John Eichenseer broke the headstock off of his viola.

Read more here:
"Viola Smackdown! - A broken instrument and enraged audience after a heckler disupts Pamela Z's avant-chamber music event." (Jeanne Cartensen, The Bay Citizen, June 9, 2011)


And you thought Richmond was Fist City...

I don't understand the audience's dismay.  Joan Jeanrenaud, formerly of the Kronos String Quartet...."said she was surprised by this reaction and added, “Hasn’t John Cage already proved the point that all sound is music?”

If "all sound is music," then the sound of the heckling is music, the sound of the scroll popping off is music, the sound of the viola crashing to the ground and causing reverberations in the speaker is music.  You're performing avant-garde music, expect avant-garde reactions.

Do we really want audiences to sit passively, hands neatly folded, keeping their opinions to themselves?
Is the appropriate reaction to heckling to destroy an instrument?

I'm about 95 percent convinced the entire thing was staged.  More power to them.  It made for high drama, a great evening of theater, I'm sure.  How was the music, though?