Singing Bear Music

The following is an actual event that took place in a Washington , DC Subway Station on a cold January morning in 2007 during rush hour:

A young violinist wearing a baseball cap and street clothes played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. In that time more than a thousand pedestrians walked passed him, most on their way to work.

It took three minutes before one person, out of 63, even bothered to looked his way – a middle-aged man who glanced over at the musician for a split second while walking.

A half-minute later, the violinist received his first donation – a dollar.  Without stopping, a woman threw the money in the violin case laid out in front of the musician and continued on her way.

It took six minutes before someone actually stopped briefly enough to listen: a young man leaned against the wall for a few seconds, then looked at his watch and left.

After 10 minutes, a 3 year-old boy stopped while his mother tugged him along.  The kid kept stopping, and finally his mother pushed hard and they left, but the child kept turning his head to look back. This action was repeated by several other children, and every parent – without exception – forced their child to move on.

After about half an hour of playing, only 6 people out of hundreds had stayed for a while, and about 20 tossed the violinist various amounts of pocket change.

Fifteen minutes later the performance was over and silence took over.  No one noticed.  No one applauded, nor was there any recognition whatsoever.  The violinist never drew a crowd, and after forty-five minutes of playing he made $32.17.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the most acclaimed musicians in the world.   That morning, he was playing one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Three days before, Joshua Bell, who usually earns $1,000 a minute, played before a sold-out crowd in a Boston ‘s Symphony Hall where “pretty good” seats averaged $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. One of the questions raised from this experiment was: in a common place environment, at an inappropriate hour, can we perceive “beauty”, and if so, will we stop to appreciate it?

As an advocate for meditation, the more compelling question, I thought, was posed by the Washington Post journalist at the end of the article:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the most talented musicians in the world playing some of the finest music ever written, with one of the most beautiful instruments ever crafted….

How many other things are we missing?