Would You Have Stopped?

If a world-class musician were dressed like a street performer and playing in a subway station on your way to work, would the beauty and brilliance of the music transcend the surroundings?

Would you even notice?

Or would you - like almost all of the 1,000+ people that passed Joshua Bell playing his Stradivarius violin in the L'Enfant Square metro station that morning - walk by without so much as a glance of appreciation?

This article absolutely mesmerized me. Very rarely does one find such a poetic and disturbing philosophic exposé on music, beauty, art and modern life in the Sunday paper.

Have we become so jaded and numb that we no longer appreciate beauty, art, music... life?

For our sake, I hope not.

(You can listen to the full audio of Joshua Bell's performance on Washingtonpost.com. It is breathtakingly beautiful.)

Good, But Not Great

I got to meet Josh Groban last night. It was cool.

The concert was good (not great). The music was beautiful. He is extremely talented, but the show was poorly produced. It seemed very awkward and amateurish compared to his previous shows. The worst part was the strange video images on the background. There's a fairly universal rule in stage production: the sets and lights and effects should complement and support the performance, not distract from it. I found myself distracted and confused trying to figure out what in the world I was looking at and why it was on the screen. I thought it was unfortunate, since he is so talented and the music was so beautiful, that I missed a good third of the show by having my attention pulled away from the performers.

The highlight of the show was, once again, Lucia Micarelli. She is amazingly talented. I fell in love with her at the first Josh Groban concert I attended in San Diego where she completely stole she show with her rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. Josh has since added another beautiful young woman playing a stringed instrument in Collette the cellist [30 minutes of Googling and I can't find her last name... arrgh!]. She was poised and passionate, and the perfect complement to Lucia's wild enthusiasm.

All in all, it was a lovely evening. Rob and I did the meet and greet, and Dave got to come at the last minute (to be Rob's hot date). Brian liked when Josh got on the drums at the end of the show and soloed.

Final analysis: I did not find myself being moved as I was at his Closer concert, but I was entertained.