Joshua Bell, at L'Enfant Plaza Metro.

[randomness]

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html:

Pearls Before Breakfast

By Gene Weingarten
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page W10

"It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by.

"On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

"So, what do you think happened?"

(Thanks to kjc007. Posted particularly for my friends who take the Metro every day.)

Discussion on the article is at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/04/06/DI2007040601228.html. Audio and video are linked from within the article.

Comments

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

Rick Wakeman of Yes did pretty much the same thing with pretty much the same result a number of years ago.

The Post article got discussed a fair bit in clara_girl's journal here.

A professional busker, she says in part
talent DOES NOT MATTER on the street. it's all charisma and hat line. it's all how you sell your particular schtick.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Rick Wakeman of Yes did pretty much the same thing with pretty much the same result a number of years ago.

Yeah, and there's a link somewhere in the article to Bruce Springsteen doing the same thing a couple of decades back.

talent DOES NOT MATTER on the street. it's all charisma and hat line. it's all how you sell your particular schtick.

While I don't disagree with that, I don't think that was the point of the exercise. I mean, there are lots of obvious things he could have done to maximize earnings. And as he observed, he still made $40 an hour, even doing the reverse of selling his schtick.

I think the point was to see if the music itself would stop people, and it seems clear that music alone won't.

Selling that particular schtick probably would stop people, but the Post went out of its way not to sell it.