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Concert Violinist Plays L'Enfant Plaza

By wt

This article won a Pulitzer yesterday.

It's a very long piece, but at least the beginning is worth a skim.

The WashPo took a famed concert violinist, had him play Bach's most difficult piece on his 1710 Stradivarius, and put him in the center of the Metro station in DC. The question was whether the crowds of people going by, on their ways to work, would notice brilliance and beauty in their midst or let it pass them by.

For the most part, they let it pass them by.

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute.

Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change.

That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

Very fascinating experiment. And it's hard to know whether any of us would react outside the mainstream when it came to such an experiment.

The article also has some video of the experiment, where you can hear the violinist play incredibly beautiful music.

Full post as published by Expressio Unius on April 08, 2008 (boomark / email).