Classical Convert

Joshua Bell Goes Busking

This piece in the Washington Post has been doing the rounds on the web in the last few days. It’s a not-quite-stunt in which the renowned violinist Joshua Bell went busking in Washington D.C with his multi-million dollar Stradivarius. The Post set up cameras to observe how the rush houring D.C residents would respond to one of the worlds finest musicians playing (reasonably unknown) music by some of the finest composers, on (yes, my descriptions are getting predictable) one of the world’s finest instruments. Fine.

They interviewed the people who actually stopped – which was not very many of them, and their thoughts, feelings and descriptions of the incident are all extremely interesting. There are videos from the experiment as well.

While it’s all quite fascinating stuff, the scientist inside me (“… all of us that started the game with a crooked cue …”) is suspicious of how they insisted on doing it during the morning rush hour when everyone was rushing to get to their high powered jobs on time. It’s oh so easy to dismay at the ignorance that most passengers showed when such a fine performance was dangling just feet from their feet, but it would have been different in the evening I think.

Or maybe not and we’re all doomed. The article is well written, and satisfying, whichever way you look at it.