Joshua Bell played a violin in a subway station in Washington DC metro

Ryszard Skarbek
Dec 21, 2022
5 min read

Updated: Nov 27

Joshua Bell Subway Experiment - The Washington Post - 1 — Original graphics by Dusan Petricic

Happiness and beauty live in many, often short, moments and opportunities the world gives us every day. We have to be able to notice them. However, we first need to stop to experience them and store them in our memory. Mindfulness and conscious practice of gratitude can radically change our view of the world and take our sense of happiness to an entirely different level.

That's why, on the occasion of another Christmas, we would like to share the story of violinist Joshua Bell, who played at a Washington metro station, and extend special Christmas wishes from Empowerment Coaching Krakow. Let them come true not only for Christmas!

The Joshua Bell subway station violin experiment.

Action time: 12 January 2007, Friday, morning rush hours. The setting is the L'Enfant Plaza station in the Washington, DC, metro. At the station, a street musician plays the violin.

Several thousand people pass through the station, most on their way to work. Within an hour, the violinist will play six classical pieces.

In the third minute, a middle-aged man, the first passerby, noticed the musician playing. He slowed, paused for a few seconds, and hurried on. Until that moment, sixty-three people had already passed without reaction.

In the 4th minute, the violinist received his first dollar. A woman threw it into an open violin case and kept walking.

At 6 minutes, a young man stopped. He leaned against the wall to listen to the play, but he looked at his watch and walked away. He was clearly late for work.

In the 10th minute, a boy of several years stopped, but his mother pulled him by the hand; they had to hurry. The boy dragged by his mother kept turning his head towards the musician. Several other children reacted the same way. Each time, without exception, the accompanying parent hurried the child along.

In the 45th minute, the artist was still playing. So far, only 6 people have stopped by him for a while. About 20 people gave money, but they didn't stop to listen to the music; they just kept walking.

After an hour, the musician finished playing, and there was silence. No one noticed, and no one clapped. The violinist raised a total of $32. $20 of that $32 was from the one person who recognized Bell and had just seen him play the night before at the Library of Congress. Hence, the 26 givers among the 1096 commuters pitched in a whopping $12, including many pennies.

Except for one person, no one knew that the man in the baseball cap was Joshua Bell (a child prodigy born on Dec 9, 1967, in Bloomington, Indiana), one of the greatest violinists in the world, the Music Director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and the best classical musician in America.

The most expensive violin in the world, the Stradivarius from 1713, bought for 3.5 million, was played by, among others, one of the most difficult pieces of music ever written for violin - "Chaconne" by Johann Sebastian Bach. Nobody knew that Josh Bell was one of the few musicians in the world who could play this music.

Two days earlier, Joshua Bell had played a concert in Boston Symphony Hall, one of the finest concert halls in the world. All tickets were sold out with an average price of $100. A full house applauded his talent.

Stop and hear the best classical music.

This is a true story. The world-renowned violinist Joshua Bell took part in a social experiment organized by The Washington Post. The entire Washington Post story "Perls Before Breakfast" was published in April 2007. The author, Gene Winegarten, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for this article.

This event was part of a social experiment about perception, taste, and the priorities of people.

One of the questions was:

In a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty?

Another important question arising from this experiment was:

If we don't have time to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever composed, how many other things do we miss in life?

The next day, after an anonymous performance in the subway, Joshua returned there with an official concert. This time, many people watched and admired him. Look at the video below. I strongly encourage you to watch at least the end, starting at 17 minutes and 56 seconds.

How did the Washington Post experiment inspire others?

Interestingly, the unusual instrument played by Joshua Bell belonged to Bronisław Huberman, an outstanding violinist from Czestochowa, Poland, and founder of the Israeli Philharmonic. Huberman received the instrument from Polish Count Jan Zamoyski. This item is among the most expensive instruments in its class.

Interestingly, a young boy who stopped to listen to the beautiful music performed by Joshua Bell in the Washington subway was found and became the hero of a children's fairy tale titled "The Man with the Violin".

The author of the book is Kathy Stinson. The beauty of this book, in addition to Evan's beautiful true story, also lies in the amazing illustrations by Dusan Petricic. The two images in this post are illustrations from this book.

Joshua Bell Subway Experiment - The Washington Post - 2 — Original graphics by Dusan Petricic

Interestingly enough, the night Gene Weingarten returned from accepting his Pulitzer Prize, he received an email from a librarian named Paul Musgrave, who told him he had recently seen an article about a similar experiment conducted by the Chicago Evening Post in May 1930. The classical music virtuoso Jacques Gordon played his Stradivarius outside a subway station to see if commuters would notice. The article, entitled "Famous Fiddler in Disguise Gets $5.61 in Curb Concerts," showed commuters displaying the same disinterest as Weingarten described in his Washington Post article.

Best wishes for mindfulness and appreciation

On Christmas, we wish all of us Mindfulness and Gratitude — the ability to stop and notice all those wonderful diamonds that shine in our lives every day. You need to be able to illuminate them and bring them out, just like the sun brings out the glow of sparks from the flakes of frozen snow.

Finally, I invite you to watch and listen to Joshua Bell's solo violin interpretation of the well-known jazz standard "Summertime". It's 2 minutes and 30 seconds of absolute virtuosity.