Joshua David Bell is an American violinist and conductor. He plays the Gibson Stradivarius.
From his debut at Carnegie Hall at 17, to some incognito busking on the Washington D.C. subway, Joshua Bell is one of today’s great stars of the violin, a best-selling recording artist and now a conductor.
A child prodigy
Joshua Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, on 9 December 1967. He began taking violin lessons at the age of four after his mother discovered that he had stretched rubber bands across the handles of his dresser drawer to pluck out music he had heard her play on the piano.
Soloist at 14
At the age of 14, Bell appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti. He studied the violin at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and went on to receive an Artist Diploma in Violin Performance from Indiana University in 1989.
Best-selling recording artist
An exclusive recording artist for Sony Classical, Joshua Bell has recorded more than 40 CDs since his first LP was made at the age of 18 on the Decca label.
Champion of new works
As well as playing the standard repertoire, Bell has performed many new works. Nicholas Maw’s violin concerto is dedicated to Bell, who premiered it in 1993 and won a Grammy Award for his recording.
A 300-year old Stradivarius
Joshua Bell’s instrument is a 300-year old Stradivarius violin called the ‘Gibson ex Huberman’, which was made in 1713 during what is known as Stradivari’s Golden Era. The violin had been stolen twice from the previous owner, Bronisław Huberman; the final time the thief confessed to the act on his deathbed.
Tribute to Bernstein
Joshua Bell’s Grammy-nominated Bernstein recording included the premiere of the ‘West Side Story Suite’ as well as the composer’s ‘Serenade’. Bell is pictured here rehearsing a tribute to Bernstein for the 2002 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
Supporter of charity
Bell is involved with the The Painted Turtle charity where children with serious medical conditions have fun and are given support. He is pictured here with actor Jack Nicholson at the dedication of The Painted Turtle Camp on 22 May 2004 in Lake Hughes, California.
Performing for the First Lady
Joshua Bell shakes hands with the U.S.A.’s First Lady Michelle Obama after performing at a classical music student workshop concert on 4 November 2009 in the East Room of the White House. The event was part of a series created by Mrs. Obama to highlight the importance of the arts and arts education.
Performer and lecturer
Bell was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize on 10 April 2007 at the Lincoln Centre in New York City. The prize is given once every few years to classical instrumentalists for outstanding achievement. On 3 May 2007, the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music announced that Bell had joined the faculty as a senior lecturer.
Succeeding Sir Neville Marriner
On May 26, 2011, Bell was named Music Director of the British music ensemble, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. He is the first and only other person to hold this post after the great conductor Sir Neville Marriner who founded the orchestra in 1958.
With a career spanning almost four decades, GRAMMY® Award-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 in the 2023-24 season include an international tour of his newly-commissioned project, The Elements, featuring works by renowned composers representing each of the five elements. Composers include Jake Heggie (Fire), Jennifer Higdon (Air), Edgar Meyer (Water), Jessie Montgomery (Space), and Kevin Puts (Earth). The work will receive its premiere performances with the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Hong Kong Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and Seattle Symphony Orchestra. Bell will also release his new album on Sony Classical, Butterfly Lovers, in summer 2023. The record features the Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto by Chen Gang and He Zhanhao, newly arranged for a traditional Chinese orchestra conducted by Tsung Yeh. Bell will also lead the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on tour in Australia and throughout the United States. Bell appears as artist-in-residence this season with the NDR Elbphilharmonie, and as guest artist with the New Jersey Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and more.
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 including Beethoven’s Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, an all-Bach album, For the Love of Brahms, and, most recently, Bruch: Scottish Fantasy, which was nominated for a 2019 GRAMMY® Award.
In summer 2020, PBS presented Joshua Bell: At Home With Music, a nationwide broadcast produced entirely in lockdown, by Tony and Emmy Award-winning director Dori Berinstein. The program included core classical repertoire as well as new arrangements of beloved works, including a West Side Story medley. The special featured guest artists Larisa Martínez, Jeremy Denk, Peter Dugan, and Kamal Khan. In August 2020, Sony Classical released the companion album to the special, Joshua Bell: At Home With Music (Live).
Bell has commissioned and premiered new works by John Corigliano, Edgar Meyer, Behzad Ranjbaran and Nicholas Maw, and his recording of Maw’s violin concerto received a GRAMMY® award.
Bell has collaborated with peers including Renée Fleming, Chick Corea, Regina Spektor, Wynton Marsalis, Chris Botti, Anoushka Shankar, Frankie Moreno, Josh Groban, and Sting, among others. In 2019, Bell joined his longtime friends and musical partners, cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Jeremy Denk, for a ten-city American trio tour; the trio also recorded Mendelssohn’s piano trios at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, slated for release next season.
In 1998, Bell worked with composer John Corigliano on recording 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 2021, Bell announced his new partnership with Trala, the tech-powered violin learning app. Bell maintains active involvement with Education Through Music and Turnaround Arts, and in 2014, Bell mentored and performed alongside National YoungArts Foundation string musicians in an HBO Family Documentary special, Joshua Bell: A YoungArts Masterclass. Bell received the 2019 Glashütte Original MusicFestivalAward, presented in conjunction with the Dresden Music Festival, for his commitment to arts education.
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 2019 Amazon Originals Chopin Nocturne arrangement was the first classical release of its kind on Amazon Music. Bell’s 2016 release, For the Love of Brahms, features recordings with the Academy, Steven Isserlis, and Jeremy Denk. 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 twelve, began studies with his mentor, Josef Gingold. At age 14, Bell debuted with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and 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.
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