USA: Violinist Joshua Bell receives the Avery Fisher Award, but fails to impress the general public while anonymously performing in the subway

Joshua Bell is one of the classical music world's iconic figures and the recent recipient of the distinguished Avery Fisher Award, but fame didn't stop the Grammy-Award winning violinist's music from falling on deaf ears at a subway stop in Washington, D.C. Bell, 39, received the most coveted prize in classical music, the Avery Fisher Award, on Tuesday (April 10). The award comes with a sizeable cash purse, but Bell said the value of the prize comes more with its prestige than its dollar value. "Really the honour of the prize is to be chosen by my peers and it's not awarded very often. It came as a surprise to me; it wasn't something I auditioned for, or signed up for. It was just nice to be acknowledged by one's colleagues." Bell may be acknowledged by his colleagues, but he got the cold shoulder from the public recently. As part of an experiment by the Washington Post newspaper, Bell swapped his formal concert garb for jeans, a T-shirt and a baseball cap to anonymously play six classical pieces outside a Metro station in a test of perception and public taste. As the video footage of the experiment shows, Bell failed to draw even a tiny crowd while performing in the station. After 43 minutes during morning rush hour, and playing on a 1713 Stradivarius reported to cost around 3.5 million dollars, only one of 1,097 people who passed by recognized him, and many, said Bell, were even annoyed by his presence. "It was still almost hurtful sometimes when somebody just walked by when I really did try to play my best and try to get into the music, and someone walks by completely ignoring, almost annoyed that you are filling up the space with sound, or maybe noise to them if they're not open to hearing something. It's a very strange feeling." A strange feeling indeed for the former child prodigy who commands ticket prices of 100 dollars or more at his concerts. As for concerts, Bell is about to embark on a European concert tour, but he says despite all the attention to his performances, his new dream is to compose. "I would like to have some sort of legacy in composition and I do compose for myself often, but I have yet to really produce something big. I do enjoy writing, and I make my own arrangements, and I feel like I haven't dedicated enough time and that's what it takes. So when I do start slowing down in my next decade on the performing circuit, I do hope I have more time to concentrate on sitting quietly and composing. I do enjoy that, but I don't allow myself enough time for that." And time is not readily available for Bell, who performs an average of 120 concerts a year. As for a follow-up performance in the subway, Bell said that once was enough.

ITN Source | April 19, 2007

Tags:. .taste. .fails. .failed. .maybe. .jeans