With a career spanning almost four decades, Grammy-winning violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated artists of his era. Bell has performed with virtually every major orchestra in the world and continues to maintain engagements as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor and as the Music Director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
Bell’s highlights for the 2024-25 season include the release of two new albums: Thomas de Hartmann Rediscovered, which features the world premiere recording of Ukrainian composer Thomas de Hartmann’s Violin Concerto, with conductor Dalia Stasevska and the INSO-Lviv Orchestra, out August 16, 2024 on Pentatone, as well as an album of Mendelssohn piano trios, which Bell recorded with longtime friends and collaborators Jeremy Denk and Steven Isserlis, out August 30, 2024 on Sony Masterworks. Bell will rejoin Denk and Isserlis in November 2024 for a series of concerts at Wigmore Hall, on a program featuring Fauré chamber music (which they will record together later this season for a future album release). An avid recitalist, Bell tours internationally to South America, Australia and mainland China, and he performs his beloved “Voice and the Violin” program with soprano Larisa Martínez throughout North America. As guest soloist, Bell will appear with the New York Philharmonic, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He will both conduct and play with the DSO Berlin, as well as in his role as Music Director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields.
In 2011, Bell was named music director of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, succeeding Sir Neville Marriner, who formed the orchestra in 1959. Bell’s history with the Academy dates to 1986, when he first recorded the Bruch and Mendelssohn concertos with Marriner and the orchestra. Bell has since led the orchestra on several albums, most recently Bruch: Scottish Fantasy, which was nominated for a 2019 Grammy. In April 2024, the Academy announced the extension of Bell’s music director contract through the 2027–28 season.
Bell has commissioned and premiered new works by John Corigliano, Edgar Meyer, Behzad Ranjbaran and Nicholas Maw–his recording of Maw’s Violin Concerto received a Grammy. In 2023–24, Bell introduced his newly commissioned concerto project, The Elements, a suite featuring movements by five renowned living composers: Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery and Kevin Puts. The work received its premiere performances with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Hong Kong Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Seattle Symphony Orchestra.
Bell has collaborated with peers including Renée Fleming, Daniil Trifonov, Emanuel Ax, Lang Lang, Chick Corea, Regina Spektor, Chris Botti, Anoushka Shankar, Dave Matthews, Josh Groban and Sting, among others.
In 1998, Bell worked with composer John Corigliano on the film soundtrack for The Red Violin, which elevated Bell to a household name and garnered Corigliano an Academy Award. Since then, Bell has appeared on several other film soundtracks, including Ladies in Lavender (2004) and Defiance (2008). Bell commemorated the 20th anniversary of The Red Violin (1998) in 2018–19, bringing the film with live orchestra to various festivals and the New York Philharmonic.
Bell has also appeared three times as a guest star on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and made numerous appearances on the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. Bell is also featured on six Live from Lincoln Center specials, as well as a PBS Great Performances episode, “Joshua Bell: West Side Story in Central Park.” In summer 2020, PBS presented Joshua Bell: At Home with Music, a nationwide broadcast produced entirely in lockdown, by Tony- and Emmy-winning director Dori Berinstein. In August 2020, Sony Classical released the companion album to the special, Joshua Bell: At Home with Music (Live).
For his contributions to music education, Bell received the 2022 Paez Medal of Art, bestowed by the Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts, and the 2019 Glashütte Original Music Festival Award, presented in conjunction with the Dresden Music Festival. In 2021, Bell announced his new partnership with Trala, the tech-powered violin learning app. Bell maintains additional active involvement with Education Through Music and Turnaround Arts, and in 2014, mentored and performed alongside National YoungArts Foundation string musicians in an HBO Family Documentary special, Joshua Bell: A YoungArts Masterclass.
Bell’s ongoing partnership with Embertone, the leading virtual instrument sampling company, on the Joshua Bell Virtual Violin, a sampler created for producers, engineers, artists and composers, is widely considered the best virtual instrument of its kind. Bell also collaborated on the Joshua Bell VR experience with Sony PlayStation 4 VR, which features Bell performing with pianist Sam Haywood in full 360-degrees VR.
As an exclusive Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded more than 40 albums, garnering Grammy, Mercury, Gramophone and OPUS KLASSIK awards. Bell’s 2023 release, Butterfly Lovers, features the eponymous Violin Concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, newly arranged for a traditional Chinese orchestra conducted by Tsung Yeh. Bell’s 2019 Amazon Originals Chopin Nocturne arrangement was the first classical release of its kind on Amazon Music. Bell’s 2013 album with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, featuring Bell directing Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh symphonies, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
In 2007, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post story, centered on Bell performing incognito in a Washington, D.C. metro station, sparked an ongoing conversation regarding artistic reception. The feature inspired Kathy Stinson’s 2013 children’s book, The Man with the Violin, and an animated film with music by Academy Award-winning composer Anne Dudley. Stinson’s subsequent 2017 book, Dance with the Violin, illustrated by Dušan Petričić, offers a glimpse into one of Bell’s competition experiences at age 12. Bell debuted The Man with the Violin festival at the Kennedy Center in 2017, and, in March 2019, presented a Man with the Violin family concert with the Seattle Symphony.
Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Bell began playing the violin at age four, and at age 12, he began studies with his mentor, Josef Gingold. At age 14, Bell debuted with Riccardo Muti and The Philadelphia Orchestra, and he made his Carnegie Hall debut at age 17 with the St. Louis Symphony. At age 18, Bell signed with his first label, London Decca, and received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. In the years following, Bell has been nominated for six Grammy awards, named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America, deemed a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, and received the Avery Fisher Prize. He has also received the 2003 Indiana Governor’s Arts Award and a Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 1991 from the Jacobs School of Music. In 2000, he was named an “Indiana Living Legend.”
Bell has performed for three American presidents and the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. He participated in former president Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ first cultural mission to Cuba, joining Cuban and American musicians on an Emmy-nominated PBS Live from Lincoln Center special, Joshua Bell: Seasons of Cuba, celebrating renewed cultural diplomacy between Cuba and the United States.
Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin.
Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez