ats:
"Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out."
The Washington Post persuade violinst Joshua Bell to play on the streets of Washington during the rush hour, and, not terribly surprisingly, nobody notices.
Whoever posted this to Metafilter beat me to the Joni Mitchell reference, unfortunately.
I'm not really sure what they were testing here, though.
There really aren't that many people who're into solo violin music -- and it's not something you can really appreciate from hearing a brief bit as you walk past.
I'd be more interested to see what happened if a decent but hard-to-recognise rock/pop musician did the same thing, or if the same thing were done in a context where there were classical music enthusiasts around.
(And also, as someone says at the bottom, $45/hour really isn't that bad a payoff...)
ats: "Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out."
The Washington Post persuade violinst Joshua Bell to play on the streets of Washington during the rush hour, and, not terribly surprisingly, nobody notices.
Whoever posted this to Metafilter beat me to the Joni Mitchell reference, unfortunately.
I'm not really sure what they were testing here, though.
There really aren't that many people who're into solo violin music -- and it's not something you can really appreciate from hearing a brief bit as you walk past.
I'd be more interested to see what happened if a decent but hard-to-recognise rock/pop musician did the same thing, or if the same thing were done in a context where there were classical music enthusiasts around.
(And also, as someone says at the bottom, $45/hour really isn't that bad a payoff...)