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Bermuda Triangle for String Instruments?

News: Care to guess the most-left-behind items in NYC taxis -- and what happens to all of them?

From Sean Gillia
Posted September 18, 2009 at 02:11 PM

We've all heard about the famous violin leave-behinders...Ma, Kremer, Quinte etc....but apparently the problem isn't limited to the world's great concert artists.

I found this small item in today's New York Times:

Things left behind in taxis.

Allan Fromberg, deputy commissioner for public affairs at the TLC, told me that *stringed instruments* make up a bizarrely disproportionate number of the things people leave in cabs. Violins, violas, and cellos. "Nobody knows why," he told me. "It's a Bermuda Triangle thing."

I could not stop grinning when he told me what he had planned for the third day of the conference, yesterday: a concert performed entirely by musicians using the instruments they'd left in taxis--and later recovered.

Fascinating.  You gotta wonder.  These are not small items, after all. 

Also New York City is one of the media capitals of the world :)

Location-location-location.  There are several thousand stringed instruments in the Big Apple.  By comparison, not a whole lot of celli and violins speeding about via taxi in Springfield, Illinois.

It boggles my mind...how do you forget and leave your instrument in a cab???

Perhaps owners of the stringed instruments are disproportionately absentminded?  Can't tell you the number of times I've had to retrace steps in search of my precious friend....

That many musicians can afford taxis???

Anne's point is a good one.  I suspect that what you are dealing with is, for the most part, not professional musicians but kids going to and from lessons, rehearsals, etc.  Overscheduled, stressed New York kids, either alone or with harassed parents shepherding them, would be my candidates for the primary sources of the instruments left in cabs. 

Actually, leaving your instrument in a taxi is now a requirement at top conservatories. 

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