pearls before breakfast
I tripped over this interesting bit of news and was absolutely fascinated. What happens when one of the world's finest musicians takes his $3.5 million Stradivari violin and plays in a subway station for the better part of an hour? He got $32.17. Over a thousand people walked past him, a handful stopped, and one person realized who he was. You can read the entire thing here.
"A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work."
"A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work."
posted by audrey at 12:37 AM
2 Comments:
There is an interesting reply to the article about the violinist in the subway by a NYC subway musician on her blog: www.SawLady.com/blog
What she says is different from what the WP reporters deduced.
The SomethingAwful community was predominantly disparaging of the whole experiement, though some interesting comments came out of it. One person pointed out that getting $30 for less than an hour's work is more than most of us make.
I tend to side with Marshall McLuhan in saying "the medium is the message."
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