[Dixielandjazz] The Ultimate Busker?

[Steve Barbone]

Given the recent thread about busking, this is a neat article. I tried to
post the entire article on the DJML but I guess it is too long and so never
showed up. Here is a snipped version. To read the entire article, you can
google <Washington Post + Joshua Bell> or visit the below site.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401
721.html?hpid=topnews

Who is busker Joshua Bell? A Classical Violinist, who debuted with the
Philadelphia Orchestra at age 14. He spent the last 20 years captivating the
classical music world. He and his multi million dollar Stradivarius played
in the Washington DC subway as an experiment. This year, he won the Avery
Fisher price as the best classical musician in America.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Pearls Before Breakfast
By Gene Weingarten - Washington Post - 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?

. . . . snipped to


"It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington,"
Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and
people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping
quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was
thinking, /Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could
happen?"

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."
 
Bell headed off on a concert tour of European capitals. But he is back
in the States this week. He has to be. On Tuesday, he will be accepting
the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing the Flop of L'Enfant Plaza as the
best classical musician in America.