The best classical musician in America stunts as street musician

[bhodi]

This is an amazing article. The summary is that world renowned Joshua Bell and his 3.5 million dollar violin played at the L'Enfant Plaza metro stop here in DC, as a street musician, just to see if anyone would notice.

[Strazos]

Wow. I didn't know you could get that kind of sound, out of just one violin, in a place like that.

[Samwise]

Subway stations tend to have pretty good acoustics, even with run-of-the-mill instruments.  The sound doesn't have anywhere to escape to.

Interesting experiment.  I'm not at all surprised that most people hurried by.  Decades of conditioning.

[Sky]

People are funny. I have no idea how you could just walk past that and not even look over. I liked this paragraph:

A hundred feet away, across the arcade, was the lottery line, sometimes five or six people long. They had a much better view of Bell than Tindley did, if they had just turned around. But no one did. Not in the entire 43 minutes. They just shuffled forward toward that machine spitting out numbers. Eyes on the prize.

I think that sums it up.

Though I don't think I've ever seen a concert violinist in a lobby, I try to keep my senses open to my surroundings. My girlfriend keeps nagging me to carry my camera, because I always catch these awesome vistas, or notice something beautiful people are just walking past because they're too wrapped up in living life to stop and clichely smell the roses. Life is all about the roses, imo. So laugh if you will as I stop and spend an hour watching the thermals toss about a beautiful collection of clouds, continue on to gripe about what a shitty grey day it is without taking in the infinite grey tones writhing together. I'm happy :)

Thanks for the link, it's always nice to have a reminder to slow down and take in the environment.

[Paelos]

Man, I'd like to say that if I heard music like that I'd stop, but who knows what's going on in your head if you don't even recognize the guy. He's obviously amazing with the violin though.

[Murgos]

I'd like to think I would stop.  I stopped and watched Red Violin just because the playing was so amazing and I didn't know it was him then.  I walk to work and stop to check out stuff anyway though, but you never know.  Most of the time I tune out street musicians, usually because most of the time they are crap.