This piece in the Washington Post is one of the most interesting articles I have read in a newspaper in a long, long time.
The Post arranged for Joshua Bell, a world famous violinist, to bring his $3.5 million violin to a subway stop, open up his case for donations, and see how people respond. The story even shows you hidden video. Before you read the article, take a guess at what you think happened.
One intriguing part of the article described how Bell’s parents decided that they should start him on formal violin lessons:
…he got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.
I cannot tell you how far that description of Bell at age 4 is from anything I have observed in my own children. The closest parallel is that my oldest daughters could recite the lyrics to the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow duet “Picture” when they were two. If you know the lyrics, you will understand how that got me into some trouble more than once.
Thanks to Andrew Brock (who also blogs about this story) for bringing this article to my attention.
and 
. You can also watch it on 
most people would walk by and ask- are you THE Joshua Bell?- clearly he should get record donations, but no matter- high art for the masses is a good idea
most people would walk by and ask- are you THE Joshua Bell?- clearly he should get record donations, but no matter- high art for the masses is a good idea
I guess the fund-raising was not successful, because:
1. people don’t carry large amount of cash. do we carry check books anymore?
2. can he be trusted? really he’s Josh Bell plays?
3. people usually don’t make long stops at subway stops. thus have little time to know about the charity.
4. if it was an unadvertised event, i doubt it could be successful.
However, after the newspaper report, i guess that charity got much more attention and dollars!
I guess the fund-raising was not successful, because:
1. people don’t carry large amount of cash. do we carry check books anymore?
2. can he be trusted? really he’s Josh Bell plays?
3. people usually don’t make long stops at subway stops. thus have little time to know about the charity.
4. if it was an unadvertised event, i doubt it could be successful.
However, after the newspaper report, i guess that charity got much more attention and dollars!
It’s a bit of a setup, though:
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.
It was the middle of the morning rush hour. Buskers are a commonplace occurance, and life goes on. Burying a coy twist below the threshold of most folks’ expectations and then building a tsk-tsk write-up about it seems like awfully weak stuff.
Hell, this is a good blog; you guys get a pile of traffic from people coming here on purpose, and yet you’ve seen very well what the reader-to-comments ratio is.
There’s a (somewhat wooly and navel-gazey) backroom conversation about the ubiquity of this particularly story, over at Metafilter.
It’s a bit of a setup, though:
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.
It was the middle of the morning rush hour. Buskers are a commonplace occurance, and life goes on. Burying a coy twist below the threshold of most folks’ expectations and then building a tsk-tsk write-up about it seems like awfully weak stuff.
Hell, this is a good blog; you guys get a pile of traffic from people coming here on purpose, and yet you’ve seen very well what the reader-to-comments ratio is.
There’s a (somewhat wooly and navel-gazey) backroom conversation about the ubiquity of this particularly story, over at Metafilter.
I’d be interested to know the ins and outs of insuring a $3.5M violin during such an endeavor.
I’d be interested to know the ins and outs of insuring a $3.5M violin during such an endeavor.