There's no question that this shows something, but I'm not sure the conclusion is valid.
First, if he had been playing "Over the Rainbow" on a tenor sax, I'm pretty sure he'd have had more attention and more 'donations'. Busking is more the art of making things appeal to passersby than demanding long-term attention, which the Bach and Bell do. So clearly, this inserts program material into a venue where it fits like a square peg in a round hole. Complaining because it doesn't fit is...kinda stating the obvious. Secondly, the people who bought $100/ticket made time in their lives for sitting and listening to the music, just like the people who passed through the station did not. Does this prove anything? Yes: people tend to get themselves into a flow, and that's about it. Does this prove that Bach is unable to draw? No, Bell filled the Hall, even at $100/seat. Does it prove that people aren't interested in Bach if they're not Children? No, just that parents and adults keep to their plans and schedules. For instance, my wife and daughter are both pianists, and both interested in piano works, especially played by talented professionals. Between plains in a North Carolina airport, they were passing through a public area, and there was a pianist, a grand piano, and Debussey: beautiful! Hope even remarked on the matter, as they passed. The pianist heard her, flashed them a smile, but her hands were busy, so she couldn't even wave back. My wife and daughter were hop-skippity to get to the next plane in time, and so, with all their personal interest and the value of the performance (which they spoke of in glowing terms) they couldn't and didn't stop. They didn't leave a tip, either. For a real comparison, they should have checked to see how many commuters walked into Symphony Hall and bought $100 tickets on impulse to sit and listen to Bell and Bach. After all, that's just as inaccurate a measure of how important real music is to normal people as monitoring the hat and passers-by in a train station. While it is cute that one of our leading violinists couldn't actually stop subway commuters for 15 minutes with Bach and a 3.5-million-dollar violin, it isn't actually indicative of much of anything that I can tell. On Tue, Jan 6, 2009 at 12:08 PM, Ron Fletcher <ron.fletc...@ntlworld.com> wrote: [on Joshua Bell playing in the Metro] To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
