Joshua Bell “Stop and Hear the Music”
This is pretty amazing in a few ways, let’s get some background first:
The paper (Washington post) persuaded one of the world’s top violinists, Joshua Bell, to take his £2 million Stradivarius to a Washington subway station during the morning rush hour and play his heart out for nearly three quarters of an hour as commuters (the majority of them government officials, this being DC) wended their way to work. As he played (mostly masterpieces for solo violin by Bach), a hidden camera filmed the reaction of passers-by.
If you haven’t heard of Bell, you need to know that he’s a youthful-looking 39-year-old American who could easily pass for a student in T-shirt and baseball cap. In other words, the commuters had no clue that they were being entertained for free by a world-class soloist — except, of course, if their ears told them so.
The results were astonishing, at least to Bell, who is accustomed to wowing packed concert halls of rapt listeners. Of the 1,097 people who passed him, just seven stopped to listen. A further 20 tossed coins into his fiddle case as they hurried by. Just one person recognised who Bell was. The rest of the 1,097 commuters — all 1,070 of them — walked within a few feet of this virtuoso, his priceless fiddle and the magnificent sound of Bach without any discernible reaction whatsover.
I love the lady at the end of the video, the one that recognizes him. Her final sentence to Bell is classic.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I’d never have guessed that D.C. is filled with so many ignorant uncultured knuckle draggers. Good thing this only happens in D.C.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
SNAP!!!
October 29th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Well…he ain’t no Charlie Daniels, or nothing. But I think I’d have stood to listen for a while to this fellow anyway.
October 29th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Okay, truth time. I didn’t like what he was playing. It was depressing. Now if RUSH was playing…
October 29th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
I’m not defending the asswipes in D.C., however, everyone is in a hurry in a subway station and I’m pretty impressed that those seven took the time to stop and listen. His playing is amazing, but I agree with the Mayor, his pieces could have been more compelling. I don’t know crap about music but I love Bach and he could have played some pieces that rip your heart out. Or not.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
… and there was the “Wet Floor” sign as a distraction.
Cheers
October 30th, 2009 at 5:42 am
Yeah, I think the problem is the music, not very listenable outside a concert hall.
Do the same stunt with a good country fiddler,like Vasser Clements,and see if the reaction is the same.
October 30th, 2009 at 6:35 am
I wonder how many of the commuters might have had Bach playing on their iPods as they hurried past. The comment from the woman at the end suggests to me that she might not live around here. I still ride the Metro from time to time and I rarely see musicians set up at the stops I use. In fact, I’m hard pressed to recall seeing musicians at any time.
Might’ve been fun to have some guy break dancing next to Bell.
November 1st, 2009 at 9:35 am
[...] Joshua Bell “Stop and Hear the Music” [...]