Pearls Before Breakfast

[boston bean]

Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out.
By Gene Weingarten
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 8, 2007

HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

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. Almost all of them were on the way to work, which meant, for almost all of them, a government job. L'Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly mid-level bureaucrats with those indeterminate, oddly fungible titles: policy analyst, project manager, budget officer, specialist, facilitator, consultant.

Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?

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?

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

Just found this interesting and thought some here might as well..

[bigtree]

1. a lot of life is like that

folks are fickle

[boston bean]

2. I get it.

People just to damn busy, no time to take in the surroundings. I chalk it up to that mostly. Also, I think most people don't appreciate classical music, even if it is played on a strad by a world reknowned violinist.

[bigtree]

3. some cultures accommodate art and music

. . . even base their society around craft and artistic expression. We view those things here in America, mostly, as a cult of personality. If you put up a sign saying he was 'world renowned', he'd probably draw an appreciative crowd.

[boston bean]

4. true, also the fact that

he was viewed and treated like a panhandler.

It's sort of sad if you think about it.

[IADEMO2004]

8. I'm Guilty

At a small Iowa county political meeting in 2008 our Obama field director introduced me to her dad "Steve". We talked for a bit about her and her work driving all over SW Iowa. After the election My way-better-half and me are watching a PBS show about President Bush and his wars when we see "Steve". Steve Coll former managing editor of the Washington Post, two time Pulitzer Prize winner Steve Coll. Wide awake with my eyes closed. Your post was a great start to the day.

[Scuba]

5. So these commuters, for the most part, are not classical music lovers....

..snip..

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.

...

Bell always performs on the same instrument, and he ruled out using another for this gig. Called the Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari during the Italian master's "golden period," toward the end of his career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow, and when his technique had been refined to perfection.

...


When it was over, Furukawa introduced herself to Bell, and tossed in a twenty. Not counting that -- it was tainted by recognition -- the final haul for his 43 minutes of playing was $32.17. Yes, some people gave pennies.

"Actually," Bell said with a laugh, "that's not so bad, considering. That's 40 bucks an hour. I could make an okay living doing this, and I wouldn't have to pay an agent."



..end..


per the article, Bell coughed up $3.5 mil for his instrument.

[boston bean]

7. I don't disagree,

but, I think it more people's attitudes towards panhandlers.

Here is a musician doing something most cannot do, and is famous for it.

I do think if it was someone more mainstream, they might have gotten more notice, like Beyonce or something.

But this guys talent in that setting was not what people saw or heard for the most part.

[Quantess]

6. No surprise there. I would have walked right on past.

I don't stop and smell the roses when entering and exiting subways. I never understood why starving musicians pick that spot. Is it good acoustics?

[MineralMan]

9. I donate to all buskers.

Whether they're world-class musicians, or beginners, they all get a buck or two from me, and I always listen through at least one complete piece. Buskers are working for their money. They put themselves out there and perform, relying on passers-by to pay them for their work. It's a very tough gig, indeed.

I used to play oboe in a semi-pro woodwind quintet. We played a lot of venues, including more wedding receptions than I care to remember. We used to occasionally hold one of our weekly two-hour rehearsals in a public plaza on weekends. We'd typically get $100 or so in our tip jar at each of those rehearsals, which paid for our cheap dinner at a chinese restaurant not far from that public venue. We also got several paying gigs, since we had a sign up saying who we were and business cards in a holder attached to the sign.

Still, most people walked by without listening or pausing. They were on their way somewhere, and didn't want to take the time. That was OK. A few people always stopped and listened through at least one piece of music. They made up for all the others.