Subway Violinists

Subway performers come in a variety of shapes, sizes, styles and levels of quality. Some are wonderful, glorious performers. Others, quite obviously, are terrible.

At 6:50 in the morning, heading to work, awaiting what will surely be a packed subway car, a bad performer can be the bane of my existence. Only one coffee into the day, to listen to some trumpet player howl away over an insipid, previously recorded background track can be a rough experience.

On the other hand, there are certain performers that can literally turn my bad mood around, wipe a frown off my face, and leave me smiling and laughing as I enter a subway car. I particularly enjoy a musician that plays the musical saw (usually at Union Square), as well as the woman that plays a small (we're talking tiny here) keyboard and sings along with a voice that just begs to be heard at the Metropolitan Opera (I generally see her either at the Bedford Stop or at Union Square). My favorite musicians, however, are a strange pair that I've only seen at the Bedford Stop (on the L train).

This pair is comprised, oddly, of two people. They are both middle-aged men, one a violinist and one a guitarist (sometimes vocalist). They are playful musicians, occasionally waltzing out as they play, approaching listeners to stare at them, sort of dancing and giggling before them. The music they play is great too--well polished but improvised, sort of a strange mix between Caribbean rhythms and Eastern European solos....
Which brings me to what truly fascinates me about this musical duo:

The guitarist is a Latin American guy, short and stout. The violinist is an Eastern European, Russian perhaps. I've barely spoken with the Russian guy, but the other guy (Dominican maybe?) doesn't seem to speak any English at all. (I know this because I once translated a conversation between him and another musician). So, what I wonder about these guys is: How did they meet? How do they talk? When and where do they practice?

Isn't it strange to think about these two guys, a Russian guy and a Latin guy, presumably unable to communicate with each other, that somehow find each other and end up playing underground in New York City? I guess that these things happen every day, but every time I get a little sick of living in the city, of breathing in pollution (see this article--apparently there are schools in NYC where up to 20% of students have inhalers for asthma), being pummeled by noise, jockeyed around in subways, I realize that there are few places in the world where friendships like this exist. There's something really great about that.

Anyway, I ran across the violinist today--here a picture of him (he seemed to really enjoy posing, although I'm not sure that this picture proves that at all):