Pearls Before Breakfast

I feel smarter after having read this interesting (albeit long) Washington Post article about the psychology of classical music and the interaction of people too busy to appreciate it. There are some nifty embedded videos included but they are more about the foot traffic than they are about the music:

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?

The final video at the bottom of the article shows that he does finally draw an audience:

Link

This is a link to Joshua Bell's website with samples of his music including Schubert's, "Ave Maria." He is coming to the states in May and, of course, will be spending three days in Houston.

Via J