Bell Busks for Broadcasters
World-Class Violinist Performs at Metro Station
April 13th, 2007 by Roderick Russell
Back in January, classical violinist and Avery Fisher Prize recipient Joshua Bell did something decidedly uncharacteristic of a Grammy Award winning musician – he donned jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap and took to the streets to play for tip money.
With over a dozen recordings under his belt, countless appearances with the most prestigious orchestras and more awards and accolades than you can shake a stick at, Mr. Bell certainly didn’t have to work the streets busker-style with his 300-year-old Stradivarius (Gibson ex Huberman) violin to earn some extra cash – and a good thing too, for he only managed to pull in $32.17! Instead, he was collaborating with the Washington Post on a brilliant public experiment (the resulting article published this week) to gauge the public response to fine art and beauty outside of its typical context. That is, would the average American (or in this case, Washington professionals – perhaps a little different) know beauty if they weren’t told it was beautiful?
It’s a bold question, the answer to which many of us may not want to know. The implications of the experiment are far-reaching and the reflection of the American mind that it reveals could leave many readers sadly disappointed. To others, it may reveal the power of marketing, or remind us of how context touches every part of our lives from our art, leisure and business all the way to religion and ethics. And still yet for some, it may reveal nothing at all, as is pointed out in the article by Kantian scholar Paul Guyer.
When asked what he thought would happen “if one of the world’s great violinists had performed incognito before a traveling rush-hour audience of 1,000-odd people”, National Symphony Orchestra Director Leonard Slatkin estimated that anywhere from 75 to 100 people would stop to watch, a crowd would gather and said musician would earn about $150.
The reality? Joshua Bell, one of the world’s most accomplished violinists, played 43 minutes of music in the L’Enfant Plaza metro station in Washington, DC for 1,097 passing commuters, of which 7 people(!!) stopped for at least a minute and only one person recognized him! Let that last bit be a reminder that, despite how small the world gets in our electronic age, it remains enormously large. One of the world’s most famous musicians was recognized by only one person, and that’s only because she had seen him in concert the previous week! Most people simply passed Bell without even a glance, and there was one report of a man who walked a mere four feet from Bell while he was playing, yet had no recollection of having seen or heard any music in the metro station at all.
The article is extremely thorough and I couldn’t hope to do it justice here – I recommend that you simply read it for yourself and consider what the results may mean. But it’s just the sort of public experiment that excites me and I feel obligated to share it with you here. Compliments galore go to both Joshua Bell and the Washington Post for executing such a fantastic experiment and encouraging its readers to actually think. Keep up the good work.
tags: art, avery fisher, busking, classical music, context, dc, joshua bell, leonard slatkin, nso, perception, street performance, violin, washington post,l’enfant plaza,washington
