Photos courtesy of Unsplash
On 12 January 2007, at 7:51 in the morning, a musician takes his position against a wall in the metro station of the Washington D.C. subway. He is wearing jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and a baseball cap. He opens his violin case … removes the instrument, throws a few dollars into the case from his pocket as “seed money”, and begins playing.
He plays for the next 43 minutes, and during that time, he performs six classical pieces – flawlessly! During that 43 minutes, 1,097 people passed by, tossing in a total of $32.17 into his violin case. Of that 1,097 people, only seven paused longer than sixty seconds to listen to this performance. Of those seven who lingered, only one recognized the violinist!
The name of the violinist was Joshua Bell. He had filled Boston’s Symphony Hall three days earlier, where the cheap tickets sold for $100 apiece. Yet, when performing this day in the subway, he barely earned enough to pay for a pair of cheap shoes.
