Some of you probably heard about this a while back since it happened about a year ago but I hadn't heard about it and I bet a lot of other folks haven't either.
The article is VERY long, but I personally thought it was a damn good read. Basically world renown violinist Josh Bell was asked by the Washington Post to do a sort of social experiment and play the violin in the Washington Metro Transit system at the L'Enfant Plaza Station wearing non-descript clothes to see if people would take notice. To make things even more interesting he did so with his violin estimated to be worth some $3.5 million. He played for 43 minutes playing a selection of 6 songs he personally picked.
What made the article interesting, to me at least, was that they followed up with many of the people who passed by him on their way to work. Some recognized the beauty but not the musician, some didn't notice at all, but perhaps most interestingly they noted that all of the children who passed by showed a great deal of interest before being dragged off by their parents to deal with the troubles of the day.
Article: Link - War & Peace may serve as a good warm-up~
Audio of this Performance: Link - I listened to it while I browsed about, very awesome.
Its a very interesting article if you have the free time to get through it. Actually there is a great deal of irony, given the subject of the experiment, in the fact that many people won't bother to read the article.
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