One violin, and the hurried crowds of a tech city stop to listen
Palo Alto, the high-tech hub of California, is a place of pilgrimage for the world’s technology elite. Centered on nearby Stanford University, the city draws the most creative talent and companies in technology and medicine from around the globe. Hewlett-Packard was born in a garage here, and companies such as Google and Facebook also got their start in this city. Many startup ideas are sparked in its local cafés.
If there is anything this place lacks, it is the humanities: music and the arts.
Hoping to change that, Chener Yuan, a Chinese student studying violin at The Juilliard School, recently came to Palo Alto with her violin on her back.
That evening, University Avenue, Palo Alto’s main street, was packed with rush-hour traffic as usual. The shops and restaurants lining both sides were coming to life, inviting customers in. Far more common were people walking quickly with their heads down, earphones in, expressionless, wanting no contact with the world around them.
But when Chener Yuan drew her first note, the bustling crowd seemed to notice this unusual sound. People began to slow down, looking for where the music was coming from. As her live performance filled the air, people gradually gathered around her, listening quietly and murmuring their admiration from time to time, and warmly applauding at the end of each piece. The cars on the avenue honked their horns in place of applause.
Chener seemed entirely untouched by the commotion around her. Fully absorbed, she played one piece after another, offering her own interpretation of each. In that moment she gave herself completely to the music, and perhaps this is the highest realm music can reach: anatta, the dissolving of the self.
One listener told her that most people living nearby are engineers who don’t really appreciate classical music. Yet in just half an hour, her masterful playing and her complete focus broke down the barriers between strangers, brought their hearts a little closer together, and gave this high-tech city a different kind of cultural life.