Virtuoso Busking

[tmcg]

As linked by sleigh and fastfwd (that I've seen so far), Pearls Before Breakfast by Gene Weingarten, an interesting and very nicely written Washington Post article about an experiment setting up a virtuoso musician as a subway busker to see what kind of response there'd be from passersby. Includes video.

Comments

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean -- my usual bass is a nice 5-string Roscoe that cost me a couple thousand bucks... and I've seen drunks in bars come awfully damn close to knocking it off its stand as they stumble past...

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that's very familiar. A couple of thousand bucks is about what most of our most expensive instruments cost too. Not exactly three and a half million, but valuable by our standards...and it's painful when any instrument is damaged.

I'd forgotten about that icon of you playing! That's neat. :)

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's about the limit for instruments on my income! I wouldn't even want to hold a $3.5M violin, for fear I'd drop the damned thing...

Heck, his insurance on the instrument is probably more than my annual income. :-)

[terrymcgarry.livejournal.com]

Heh, yes! And the same here, about holding a violin that valuable.