$3.5 M violin + Joshua Bell + subway stop = ?

Amazing article in the Washington Post I found through a post by Steven Levitt on the Freakonomics Blog (“What happens when a maestro plays the subway?“). The Post got Joshua Bell, arguably the world’s greatest living violinist, to play the most complex and difficult classical pieces of music possible on his $3.5 M violin (crafted in 1710) for 45 minutes in a DC subway station.

The results? $32 in tips, $20 of which came from the one person who recognized him. Less than 10 people stopped out of the +1000 that walked by. The whole post article is really interesting, but if you don’t have time to read it skip to the end and watch the last video which recaps the whole 43 minutes. The videos aren’t embeddable so I can’t post them here. Pretty amazing stuff.