Are We Missing A Concert?

Pastor Randy Corbin, Transitional Lead Pastor

On Friday, January 12, 2007, Joshua Bell, world famed violinist, emerged from the Metro at the L’Enfant Plaza Station in Washington, DC and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket.  A youngish white man in jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap, he removed a violin.

It was not just any violin. It was his million-dollar plus Stradivarius.  It was 7:51AM, the middle of the morning rush hour.  In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by.  Almost all of them were on the way to work.  L’Enfant Plaza is at the nucleus of federal Washington, and these were mostly white-collar mid-level bureaucrats.

A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell was an internationally acclaimed virtuoso.  Three days before Bell, had filled the house at Boston’s stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100.  Two weeks later, at the Music Center at Strathmore (North Bethesda), he would play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry that they stifled their coughs.  But on that Friday, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant, competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.

The Friday morning experience was an experiment to find out how many people would stop to recognize the genius and beauty of this artist.

So how many people do you think stopped?  How much money do you guess he collected?

Three minutes went by before something happened.  Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts.  A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, but, yes, the man kept walking.

A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation – a buck.  It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

In the 45 minute concert, seven people stopped, twenty-seven gave money (merely perfunctorily, as they rushed by) for a total of $32.

Hundreds missed a rare concert including Johann Sebastian Bach’s Chaconne, written for a solo violin, considered to be one of the most difficult violin pieces to master.  Many try; few succeed.  It’s exhaustingly long – 14 minutes – and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound.

I wonder how many times I have missed a concert by the Master.  How many times has the Creator performed his work in nature, whether a flowering plant, intricately colored bird, an interestingly sculpted mountain range, or in our family?  Too busy with troubles and plans, I have walked right by the concert the Master was performing.

So, during this pandemic isolation, can we slow down at least a little to look, listen and enjoy the Master’s performances?  It is a great time of the year to experience His artistry.

So I ask:  are we missing a concert?