strum up support

[Doug Harris]

Re David Juritz's busking plan, consider this:
The Washington Symphony Orchestra's Joshua Bell, an internationally
acclaimed virtuoso, recently participated in an experiment conducted
by the Washington Post, for which he played in busker mode in a DC
Metro station concourse.
He used not just 'a' violin but the one he most prefers: "Called the
Gibson ex Huberman, it was handcrafted in 1713 by Antonio Stradivari
during the Italian master's 'golden period,' toward the end of his
career, when he had access to the finest spruce, maple and willow,
and when his technique had been refined to perfection," said the Post
article describing the experiment.
Here's how one passer-by described the event:
"It was the most astonishing thing I've ever seen in Washington," [Stacy]
Furukawa says. "Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and
people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping
quarters at him! Quarters! I wouldn't do that to anybody. I was thinking,
Omigosh, what kind of a city do I live in that this could happen?"
Not counting the $20 she contributed, Bell raked in $32.17 for 43 minutes
of playing.
Read the entire article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401
721.html

(the other) doug


>now in the ecdb, with doug quoted as above:

Don't most string section buskers scrape rather than pluck?

In that heritage, "David Juritz, the 49-year-old internationally
renowned violinist who is concertmaster of the London Mozart Players
and guest concertmaster of the Royal Philharmonic and London
Philharmonic Orchestras [presumably when he is not outside the hall
strumming up an audience]," has taken to the streets as a
busker.  "[H]e plans to play his way across 60,000 miles in 25
countries" to raise money "for charities that bring music to poor
children."  [NYTimes, June 12.]

Joel

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org