Busking Bach With David Juritz
In January, Washington Post reporter Gene Weingarten took acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell into Washington's Metro to find out how large an audience Bell would draw while performing incognito on his priceless Stradivarius. The results were disappointing, to say the least. Only a single person recognized Bell during his busking experiment, and he was ignored totally by thousands. Weingarten wrote: "If we can't take the time out of our lives to stay a moment and listen to one of the best musicians on Earth play some of the best music ever written; if the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind to something like that—then what else are we missing?"
Commuters and passersby have been given a second chance. On June 9, violinist David Juritz, London Mozart Players concertmaster and guest leader of the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic orchestras, began an international busking experiment of his own. Juritz has been performing on the streets of cities on all five continents to raise money for Musequality, the charity he founded to offer music education to some of the world's poorest children. He has raised more than $13,000 busking for Musequality during his "Around the World and Bach" tour. But it hasn't been easy, and he'll soon shift his attention to more lucrative corporate sponsors. The New York Times caught up with him:
"Busking is really time-consuming and it feels chaotic," he said, adding, "You have days where you feel shattered." During a brief stop in London at the end of June, after the European leg of his tour, he said, the prospect of going back out on the road for almost four months seemed "pretty grim."
Watch Juritz perform Bach's Prelude in E Major, in Madrid, here.