Thank you for posting "The Violin Thief."  Here's another story,
but shorter.

It was perhaps 15 years ago that we visited a school friend in
suburban Maryland.  The ladies wanted to shop and left me on a sofa
near a piano/organ store (they still existed in shopping malls then.)

A number of instruments were outside the store and while I sat there
I heard the most amazing and beautiful music.  I looked up and saw
a man -- possibly a young man, but I couldn't tell -- at one of the
display pianos.  He was slouched down in an overcoat far too warm
for the spring day and looked utterly disheveled, unto insane.  And
I knew that his music was nothing I'd ever heard before.

I stood up to approach him, but when I turned around he was gone.
Nobody in the store had heard or seen him.

Mark Kinsler