Joshua Bell

With a career spanning almost four decades, GRAMMY Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated artists of his era. Having performed with virtually every major orchestra in the world, Bell continues to maintain engagements as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor, and Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, a position he began in 2011, succeeding Sir Neville Marriner, who formed the orchestra in 1958. Born in 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana, Bell began the violin at age four, and at age twelve, began studies with his mentor, Josef Gingold. At 14, he debuted with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and made his Carnegie Hall debut at 17 with the St. Louis Symphony. A year later, Bell signed with his first label, London Decca, and received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. In 1998, Bell partnered with composer John Corigliano and recorded the soundtrack for the film The Red Violin, which helped him become a household name and garnered an Academy award for the composer. Bell has collaborated with artists across a multitude of genres, partnering with peers including Renée Fleming, Chick Corea, Regina Spektor, Wynton Marsalis, Chris Botti, Anoushka Shankar, Frankie Moreno, Josh Groban, and Sting, among others. He has also collaborated twice with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra and Maestro Tsung Yeh, with Bell featuring as soloist alongside traditional Chinese instruments performing Western repertoire and the Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto, one of the most renowned violin works in Chinese cultural heritage. Active in commissioning new works from living composers as well, Bell has premiered concertos of John Corigliano, (double concerto) Edgar Meyer, Behzad Ranjbaran and the Nicholas Maw’s Violin Concerto, for which his recording received a Grammy Award. All in all, Bell has recorded more than 40 albums garnering Grammy, Mercury, and Gramophone awards, and his album with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts. Bell’s interest in technology led him to partner with Embertone, as well as with Trala, the tech-powered violin learning app, which Bell works with to develop a unique music education curriculum. He maintains an active involvement with Education Through Music and Turnaround Arts and in 2019, he received the Glashütte Original MusicFestivalAward, presented in conjunction with the Dresden Music Festival, for his commitment to arts education. Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin.