Joshua Bell Bio

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Joshua Bell


Violinist Joshua Bell has chosen the 'timeless melody' as the theme for his latest Sony Classical recording, Romance of the Violin. Bell hand-picked his favorite melodies across a wide spectrum, featuring music from Monteverdi to Debussy, and even borrowing classics from the piano and vocal repertoire. All of the works are heard in new settings specially created by Craig Leon, master arranger and producer, who has worked in the pop world as well as with classical artists such as Luciano Pavarotti and countertenor Andreas Scholl. The new recording features the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Michael Stern.

With Romance of the Violin, Joshua Bell explores new territory by reinventing the way we listen to familiar classics. His choices are personal and unconventional, as in his selection of Schumann's beloved piano miniature, Traumerei, or the opera arias of Puccini and Bellini. As befits an artist of such versatility, Bell makes himself at home in Chopin's Piano Nocturne in C sharp minor, performing it as if it had been originally conceived for violin, and shaping it with extraordinary nuances of color and rhythm.

Bell's artistry is a mixture of the adventurous and the traditional and he has the uncommon ability to bridge the two effortlessly. His last Sony Classical release is a case in point, featuring a cadenza Bell composed himself for Mendelssohn's venerable Violin Concerto--a bold departure from customary practice. Romance of the Violin similarly strikes a balance between a reverence for the past and a desire to update it. The young artist took fresh inspiration from the 'old school' of violinists (such as Kreisler, Sarasate, and Wieniawski) who mesmerized audiences with their direct, personal interpretations. Bell found a link to these bygone artists through his violin teacher, the late Josef Gingold. ³Gingold instilled in me the values of the old school,² Bell says with obvious admiration. ³At my lessons we would listen to Kreisler 78's for hours. Kreisler became a hero of mine.² Bell notes that these violinists were also composers, who understood the music they played from the inside-out. Their unselfconscious adaptation of music from all genres was a model for Romance of the Violin.

Known widely for his brilliant, moving performance on the soundtrack to The Red Violin--a film which traced the mysterious and surprising background of a historic violin--Joshua Bell now brings his own exceptional instrument to Romance of the Violin. He plays an Antonius Stradivarius which has a history easily as colorful as that of the fictional 'red violin.' Made in 1713 during the maker's 'golden period,' and known as the 'Gibson ex Huberman,' the instrument was stolen from Carnegie Hall in 1936 when its owner, the renowned violinist Bronislaw Huberman, momentarily left it unguarded. Huberman never lived to see the instrument again, since it was not recovered until the 1980s when the thief made a deathbed confession. Unfortunately, the violin was at that point in pitiful shape since the illicit owner had never been able to repair it (for fear of discovery) and had only played it in smokey bars and cafes. Specialists spent months painstakingly stripping away 50 years of accumulated dirt and grime, revealing the original red varnish. The instrument was restored in time to be displayed at an important Stradivarius exhibit in Cremona, Italy, where it was bought by the violinist Norbert Brainin. Eventually the 'Gibson ex Huberman' found its way into the hands of Joshua Bell. The moment he first played it, Bell says, he instinctively knew the instrument was destined for him. Its velvety tone is at the very heart of Romance of the Violin.

A violinist of diverse musical interests and accomplishments, Joshua Bell has been an exclusive Sony Classical artist since 1996. His critically acclaimed recordings for the label have ranged from core-classical works to contemporary music. Bell was a key fact in the success of the Academy Award®-winning score of The Red Violin, composed by John Corigliano, who proclaimed upon accepting the Oscar, ³Joshua plays like a god!² Bell's recording of Nicholas Maw's Violin Concerto captured the Grammy for Best Solo Performance with Orchestra, and he also gained Grammy nominations for each of his various crossover projects (Short Trip Home, Gershwin Fantasy, The Red Violin, Listen to the Storyteller and Bernstein: West Side Story Suite, which won a Grammy as the year's Best Engineered Album.)

Bell's performances and his magnetic presence have earned him popularity and acclaim that reach far beyond the concert hall. People magazine has named him one of the ³50 Most Beautiful People in the World² and Glamour magazine chose him as one of six ³It Men of the Millennium.² Bell has been featured on The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Charlie Rose, CNN, CBS This Morning, the Indy 500 Victory Celebration on ESPN, PBS' Evening at Pops and CNBC, and he was the only musician featured on the Nightline TV special, ³To Be the Best.² He is one of the first classical musicians to be the focus of a music video, which has been broadcast on VH1, Arts & Entertainment and Bravo television networks. Joshua Bell was the subject of a March 1995 documentary film presented on BBC's Omnibus and recently broadcast on Bravo. He has appeared on Sesame Street and was also included in a program on Mozart from A&E's Biography series. Bell appeared on both the 2002 Grammy Awards telecast--playing an excerpt from West Side Story Suite--and on the 1999 telecast, when he performed a selection from the Grammy-nominated Short Trip Home, an excursion into bluegrass music with double bassist Edgar Meyer, guitarist Mike Marshall and mandolinist Sam Bush. The popularity of West Side Story Suite also resulted in a Great Performances special on PBS in 2001, with Bell playing the piece and other Bernstein favorites in a concert with the New York Philharmonic, filmed in Manhattan's Central Park.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Joshua Bell received his first violin at age four. It was a 1/16th size instrument his parents gave him after they discovered he had stretched rubber bands around the handles of his dresser drawers, to pluck out melodies he heard his mother playing on the piano. Growing up a typical American kid--with what he calls a ³slight addiction² to computer games-- he played basketball competitively and made the finals of a national tennis tournament when he was ten. Yet Bell was seriously committed to the violin by age twelve, when he met the renowned violinist and pedagogue, Josef Gingold, who became his beloved teacher and mentor. As winner of the Seventeen Magazine/General Motors competition in 1981, he came to national attention at fourteen years of age. That year, Bell made his highly acclaimed orchestral debut with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and soon after debuted at Carnegie Hall, won an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and made his first recordings, creating a sensation that rapidly spread throughout the music world. Since that time Bell has performed with the world's leading symphony orchestras, and with such conductors as Vladimir Ashkenazy, Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Chailly, Christoph von Dohnányi, Antal Dorati, Charles Dutoit, Christoph Eschenbach, John Eliot Gardiner, James Levine, Roger Norrington, Seiji Ozawa, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Leonard Slatkin, Yuri Temirkanov, Franz Welser-Möst, and David Zinman.

A chamber music enthusiast, Bell initiated a chamber music series at London's Wigmore Hall and the Auditorium du Louvre in Paris. He enjoys regular chamber music collaborations with Yefim Bronfman, Pamela Frank, Steven Isserlis, Edgar Meyer, Olli Mustonen, and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. A multifaceted musician, he has also teamed up with artists such as James Taylor, Chick Corea, and Bobby McFerrin. Joshua Bell has made his mark with a continuous stream of inventive musical projects and he continues to explore all sides of the musical spectrum in both concerts and recordings. He currently resides in New York City.


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