Performance Year: 2025, 2027
With a career spanning four and a half decades, Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell CBE is one of the most celebrated artists of our time. He has performed with virtually every major orchestra in the world and regularly appears as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor, and serves as the Music Director of London’s Academy of St Martin in the Fields (ASMF). In 2025, he was awarded an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by King Charles III for Services to Music.
In the 2026-27 season, Bell leads two extensive international tours with ASMF, first coupling Dvořák’s Violin Concerto with Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony in Taipei, Macao, Beijing, Shanghai, and other destinations in China, then pairing concertante works by Bruch and Dvořák with symphonies by Mendelssohn and Brahms in London, Berlin, Hamburg, and other major European cities. In his second season as Principal Guest Conductor of the New Jersey Symphony, he plays and conducts all-Beethoven programs to mark the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death. Other orchestral highlights include a return to the New York Philharmonic, where he conducts Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony and leads Vivaldi’s Four Seasons from the violin, and concerto engagements with the Orchestre de Paris and the Boston, Atlanta, and Detroit Symphonies. Bell also embarks on a high-profile European recital tour with pianist Peter Dugan, performing programs of Bach, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, and John Corigliano at London’s Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and beyond.
In 2011, Bell was named Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, succeeding Sir Neville Marriner, who founded the orchestra in 1959. Bell’s history with the Academy dates back 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 the 2019 Grammy-nominated Bruch: Scottish Fantasy. In April 2024, the Academy announced the extension of his contract through the 2027-28 season. Bell is also the Founder and Music Director of the Chamber Orchestra of America (COA), which aims to empower the next generation of artists through performance opportunities, mentorship, and educational outreach initiatives. In April 2025, COA made its debut at TED2025, where Bell gave a TED Talk about the power of live orchestras in today’s tech-filled world. A keen advocate for accessible music education, Bell received the 2022 Paez Medal of Art from the Venezuelan American Endowment for the Arts and the 2019 Glashütte Original Music Festival Award, presented in association with the Dresden Music Festival.
Bell has commissioned and premiered new works by John Corigliano, Edgar Meyer, Behzad Ranjbaran, and Nicholas Maw, winning a Grammy Award for his recording of Maw’s Violin Concerto. In 2023–24, he introduced his newly commissioned concerto project, The Elements, a five-movement suite by renowned living composers Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery, and Kevin Puts. Bell gave the work’s premiere performances with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and Seattle Symphony.
Bell worked with John Corigliano on the film soundtrack for The Red Violin (1998), which won the composer an Academy Award and made Bell a household name. Since then, he has appeared on several other soundtracks, including Ladies in Lavender (2004) and Defiance (2008). To commemorate the 20th anniversary of The Red Violin, he performed with live orchestra to screenings of the film at festivals and with the New York Philharmonic. He has 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 on a PBS Great Performances episode, “Joshua Bell: West Side Story in Central Park.” In 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. Sony Classical subsequently released the companion album, Joshua Bell: At Home with Music (Live).
Bell has been nominated for six GRAMMY awards, was named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America, deemed a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, received the Avery Fisher Prize, and was named an “Indiana Living Legend” in 2000. He has collaborated with a diverse set of 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. Additionally, he has performed for three American presidents and the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Bell participated in President Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ mission to Cuba, resulting in an Emmy-nominated PBS Live from Lincoln Center special.
Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin.
