The Forgotten-in-Taxi Stringed Instrument Story
April 6, 2013 5:40 PM   Subscribe

Are these actually staged "awareness-raising events" for the classical music industry or honest mistakes made by skilled professionals with priceless devices?

It seems like every few years some famous (or not-so-famous) musician forgets a valuable classical cello in a vehicle. It's later returned to the relief of all.
posted by PixelPiper to Media & Arts (15 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hanlon's and Occam's Razors would suggest the latter. In my experience, people seem to already be aware of classical music.
posted by zamboni at 5:52 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


Musicians, especially famous ones, spend a lot of time in cabs in unfamiliar cities. Think about how many times you've forgotten something you need for work, just long enough to step away from your car. In that much time, a cab has already pulled away.
posted by Etrigan at 5:55 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


I have trouble believing that anyone would be willing to risk a multi-million-dollar instrument for "awareness", whatever that means. Better to spend the money on an ad campaign, considering that there's a solid chance that the instrument would be gone for good. Unless the awareness is related to how much classic instruments cost, and to reinforce to musicians who keep them how often they go missing.
posted by supercres at 6:01 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


People forget their children in their cars. Forgetting a priceless violin seems entirely possible.
posted by rtha at 6:06 PM on April 6, 2013 [6 favorites]


Based on my experience in TV and film, these are probably not city licensed yellow cabs (the ordinary kind you hail off the street) but booked-in-advance towncars.

The ability to forget a million dollar instrument in a vehicle is just one of the many reasons people who handle the logistics of getting celebrities from point A to point B book cars or limos rather than leaving it to Yo Yo Ma to convey himself and his million dollar cello to the concert hall.

(If you book a car in advance, you know which company you used and there's likely a paper trail leading to the driver. It also makes it less likely that the driver will try to keep the valuable instrument, since there will be piles of evidence that he stole it.)

At the very least, this is why the instruments in these stories are always found in the end. At least when it comes to world-class musicians like this. If you're third violin for some random symphony somewhere, you best hope you don't leave your violin in the taxi.
posted by Sara C. at 6:07 PM on April 6, 2013 [4 favorites]


I have trouble believing that anyone would be willing to risk a multi-million-dollar instrument for "awareness"

But getting a taxi driver (or taxi company) in on it for good mutual publicity might be possible. I'm not saying I believe it's true, but it is at least possible that a taxi driver could work this stunt in collusion with a musician and then both smile as reports of their hard work and honesty hit the news. Someone certainly makes a point of calling the news instead of keeping it quiet when it happens, don't they?

I put this in the very unlikely but not impossible category.
posted by pracowity at 6:19 PM on April 6, 2013


I'd say it's just confirmation bias + the power of a good story.

We don't hear about everything else that gets left in cabs and returned - computers, phones, coats, purses. Those things seem boring to us. People leave things in cabs all the time and surprisingly often they get them back (my mom left her purse in a Boston cab last year, for instance, and we got it back). The stories charm us more because they are about the arts and the item lost seems, to us, unique and unusually expensive. (When in fact a purse full of identity-theft potential can represent more total value).

Musicians also really bond with their instruments and try everything they can think of to get them back, so you're more likely to see a desperate social-media/Craigslist/local media effort to put out an APB on instruments than on something more pedestrian.
posted by Miko at 8:51 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


Flying out of National in DC recently, I was in the waiting area near a couple who, from what I overheard of their phone calls, were trying to track down the cab that the woman had left her wallet in - with all her ID in it. They didn't remember the cab company, but the doorman at their hotel had gotten it for them.

After several phone calls and about 30 increasingly nerve-wracking minutes (the suspense was killing me), their name was called to the check-in desk. The hotel had tracked down the cab, but the cabbie was already en route back to the airport because his fare after them had noticed her wallet. A TSA worker brought it to her. I felt like cheering.
posted by rtha at 9:26 PM on April 6, 2013 [3 favorites]


There are hundreds of Stradivarii in existence. There are many hundreds more from other renowned luthiers. While some are kept as museum pieces, many are on loan from patrons of the arts to individual performers as their everyday instruments. In fact, the more notable the instrument, the more likely the owner will play it on tour, especially internationally. You've often got a potent combination of unfamiliar cities and jet lag.

On top of that, an instrument is, fundamentally, a tool that gets daily use. No matter how unthinkably expensive it is, you get accustomed to it. The fact that the cymbals I'm playing cost X hundreds of dollars doesn't stop me from smacking them together as hard as I can. It would be difficult to function effectively as a performer if you were constantly thinking, "Ohmigod, I'm carrying around a million dollar instrument."

All of this is a long-winded way of saying that even million dollar instruments get treated as ordinary luggage in cabs every single day. Someone will forget their case again soon, and it will make the news, but it's entirely inadvertent.
posted by wnissen at 11:36 PM on April 6, 2013 [2 favorites]


Classical musicians are no less inclined to do stupid shit with their valuables than the general public. Sometimes they get lucky.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 11:55 PM on April 6, 2013 [1 favorite]


Musicians also really bond with their instruments and try everything they can think of to get them back

Also, a lot of famous instruments -- like Stradivarii -- are actually owned by wealthy collectors/patrons, and the people playing them have them on lease or loan. The list posted by wnissen has numerous "on loan to" designations.

Based on my experience in TV and film, these are probably not city licensed yellow cabs (the ordinary kind you hail off the street) but booked-in-advance towncars.

That makes little sense to me. A town car rental arrangement -- with an office -- would make a lost property situation all but trivial. It's cabs caught on the street by the symphony hall or at the airport who are not going to be in communication with their customers (at least in the cash era, but debit cards may be making that obsolete as well). A livery driver would also be more likely to act as a valet and help handle the luggage since they are not metered.

I think it's really just that musicians travel a lot, they have to use cabs almost exclusively rather than trains and buses, and they may well be exhausted by either this travel or just at the end of a night of playing their instrument.

And then what Miko said about confirmation bias. I used to ride a commuter train -- the Metra bi-level, in particular -- and there were frequently (especially upstairs) things being left behind, from scarves to gloves to cameras. Once there was a weird pre-smartphone device -- not a Blackberry, not an iPod -- that some other passenger was trying to manipulate to either call the owner or base or some such, since the conductors were inclined to just dump this $500-1000 device in the lost and found and it didn't sit well with him.

Then there was Rachel Barton Pine, who did remember her violin [uh, scary story, if you don't know it -- it got caught in train doors]. I think what this illustrates is the travel/disorientation aspects as well as the complications of carrying an instrument as well as whatever else people often carry on a commute.
posted by dhartung at 3:58 AM on April 7, 2013


There seems to be a weird quirk in human nature whereby forbidden things can become compulsory under some circumstances.

There are clinical conditions that make this much more likely to happen to those who suffer from them, such as Tourette's and the horrifying Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, but the comics cliche of swearing after striking one's thumb with a hammer is only one indicator that some form of it lurks just beneath the surface in more normal individuals.

The collective behavior of Rock musicians suggests something might be going on there, too. The case is much more difficult to make with classical music players, but even so, I think that's what could be happening when they leave these priceless instruments behind, as well as when people leave their children in their cars.
posted by jamjam at 9:58 AM on April 7, 2013


I agree that there's something "human nature" about it, but I don't think it's that complicated. I think it's just human nature to only be able to handle a finite number of things at the same time.

Especially in terms of whatever kind of brainspace deals with "mundane things I need to be aware of in the short term". The end of a cab ride relies heavily on that brainspace. There are a lot of things to remember all at once, some potentially involving money, and the whole thing needs to happen fairly quickly. This is why people leave things in cabs all the time.

The only really interesting part of the story is the part where there's a flurry of activity all over the city and the police are involved and it's like finding a needle in a haystack. If Yo Yo Ma left his wallet in a taxi after a night out with the boys, it would be a miracle if it were recovered. But a cello is a pretty specific object, and the overall situation is pretty memorable.

I don't think it's a conspiracy theory so much as a situation somewhat blown out of proportion for drama/storytelling/reporting purposes.
posted by Sara C. at 10:51 AM on April 7, 2013


One thing that makes happy conclusions to these stories more common: objects whose extreme value is linked to their uniqueness or high rarity are really hard to fence. Sure, one can get a pittance for them at a pawnshop where neither the buyer nor seller is aware of their worth, but if you actually want to move a valuable object, you need a professional, and (a) most cabbies don't have a professional dealer in stringed instruments on their speed-dial, and (b) neither an honest nor a dishonest dealer would touch an unprovenanced museum-quality piece, because it's both unethical and extremely risky to try to move a stolen object that can be definitively and farily easily linked to its owner.
posted by jackbishop at 4:37 AM on April 8, 2013 [2 favorites]


As an "awareness-raising event", I think this would be a fail. If they wanted to use something like this for classical music outreach, there would be a massive "Yo-Yo got his cello back!" concert in the city in question. But just a news story? It might make more people aware that there are violin-carrying professionals win the world, but a news story about some flaky-brained professional musician who seems to think that carrying a million-dollar item around is such a normal thing to do that (s)he forgets it in a cab or leaves it on top of the car like a cup of coffee, is not inherently going to inspire much interest in hearing the music that said airhead plays.
The best-case scenario would be "Hooray! Now that [visiting artist] has got her cello back, let's buy tickets to the symphony" but that's really only applicable to classical music fans; there's always the unlikely scenario of: "Huh, I thought classical music was weird and elitist, but even people who have a violin that costs more than 4x my underwater house are total dipshits just like the rest of us. Let's go hear what a dipshit sounds like onstage!" but I can't imagine arranging a lost intrument story just hoping that this would work. The more common reaction would probably be: "Christ, his name is Yo-Yo? For real? Download me one of those tracks, man, I gotta hear this shit. Oh, it's 25 minutes long and doesn't have lyrics? Never mind."
posted by aimedwander at 8:07 AM on April 8, 2013


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