Joshua Bell

With more than 40 CDs recorded during a career spanning over thirty years as a soloist, chamber musician, conductor and director, Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated violinists of his era. Since 2011, Bell has also served as Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, succeeding Sir Neville Marriner, who formed the orchestra in 1958.

Just released is an exclusive single recording of Chopin’s “Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2 featuring a new arrangement by Bell for violin and chamber orchestra, available only on Amazon Music HD, a new tier premium quality streaming audio from Amazon Music.

Bell recently engaged in two tech projects: With Embertone, a leader in virtual instrument sampling, the Joshua Bell Virtual Violin was created for producers, artists, engineers and composers. Bell also teamed up with Sony for the Joshua Bell VR Experience featuring Bell performing Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 1 in full 360-degree VR. This experience is available for free download for SONY PlayStation 4 VR.

Bell’s interests range from repertoire hallmarks to commissioned works, including Nicholas Maw’s Violin Concerto, for which Bell received the GRAMMY® award. Committed to expanding music’s cultural impact, Bell has collaborated with peers including Chick Corea, Wynton Marsalis, Chris Botti, Frankie Moreno, and Josh Groban.

Recently, Bell joined cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Jeremy Denk to record Mendelssohn’s piano trios, slated for release in early 2020. He also collaborated with the Singapore Chinese Orchestra on a record featuring the Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto, to be released in fall 2020.

Bell maintains an avid interest in film music, having recorded many soundtracks for the cinema. He recently commemorated the 20th anniversary of The Red Violin (1998) in 2018-19. The film’s Academy-Award winning soundtrack features Bell as soloist and in 2018, Bell brought the film with live orchestra to summer festivals and the New York Philharmonic.

An exclusive Sony Classical artist, his many recordings have garnered GRAMMY®, Mercury®, Gramophone and OPUS KLASSIK awards. Bell was at last year’s GRAMMY Awards show, having received a nomination for his release with The Academy of St Martin in the Fields of Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy and G minor Violin Concerto.

In 2007, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post story on Bell performing incognito in a Washington, D.C. metro station, sparked a conversation regarding art and context and inspired Kathy Stinson’s 2013 children’s book, The Man With The Violin. In 2017, Bell debuted Man With The Violin family concert, including a newly-commissioned animated film, with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Bell began violin at age four, and at age twelve, began studies with Josef Gingold. At 14, Bell debuted with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and debuted at Carnegie Hall at age 17 with the St. Louis Symphony. Bell received the 2007 Avery Fisher Prize and has been named Musical America’s 2010 “Instrumentalist of the Year” and an “Indiana Living Legend.”

Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin, with a François Tourte 18th-Century bow.