Sunday, April 22, 2007
Pearls Before Breakfast - washingtonpost.com
"A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work."
Just read this interesting article on an experiment where one of the world's greatest violinists posed as a street musician and played six classical pieces in 43 minutes at a busy metro station in Washington during the morning rush hour. The article is rather long-winded but it does raise some thoughts about music and art. Are people only able to appreciate art when it is placed in a gallery or a concert hall and labelled "art"? KI pple can discuss this if you want (:
