A Lone Cellist Started Playing in a Busy Fish Market. Minutes Later, Ninety Musicians Filled It With Beethoven

It was an ordinary Saturday morning at Privoz, the big fish market in Odessa, Ukraine.

Shoppers were looking over the day’s catch. Vendors were busy behind their counters. Then, at about 10:30 on March 22, 2014, a single cellist began to play.

One shopper later said she thought at first she was imagining it.

She was not. One by one, other musicians stepped out of the crowd. Violins came out of bags. String players took their places behind the market stalls. Singers joined in. Before long, about ninety performers from the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra and the Odessa Opera chorus were filling the hall with music from the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the famous “Ode to Joy.”

The conductor was Hobart Earle, who had led the Odessa Philharmonic since 1991. He told the Kyiv Post the idea came up during a coffee break between rehearsals.

It took careful planning. The musicians did a walk-through the night before and synchronized their watches that morning. The music was condensed onto a single sheet so it could be played in such a tight space.

It was a tense time in Ukraine, and the musicians wanted to offer a message of peace and brotherhood. Earle said there was no need to choose a piece: Beethoven’s Ninth already speaks of people coming together.

In the video, you can watch the faces in the crowd change. People stop shopping, pull out their phones, and simply listen.

When the last chord rang out, customers and market workers alike gave the musicians a standing ovation.

For five minutes, a fish market became a concert hall, and a crowd of strangers shared the same moment of joy.