VIOLIN RECITAL
With a career spanning four decades, multiple Grammy awards, recitals in the most prestigious concert halls of the world, and collaborations and projects with artists spanning continents and genres, Joshua Bell “doesn’t stand in anyone’s shadow” (New York Times). One of the most celebrated and visionary performers of his generation, he has become a household name synonymous with unmatched artistry and virtuosity.
Program
PRESENTING SPONSOR OF
THE GREAT PERFORMERS SERIES
Violin
With a career spanning almost four decades, Grammy Award–winning violinist Joshua Bell has performed with virtually every major orchestra in the world, and continues to maintain engagements as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor, and music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Mr. Bell’s highlights this season include an international tour of his newly-commissioned project, The Elements, featuring works by living composers. The work receives its premiere with the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Hong Kong Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, and Seattle Symphony. Last summer he released his new album on Sony Classical, Butterfly Lovers. He made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 1991 as a Shenson Young Artist.
Mr. 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. He has performed for three American presidents and the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. He also participated in Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ mission to Cuba 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.
Piano
Peter Dugan is the host of NPR’s From the Top and has appeared internationally as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. In 2020, he joined Joshua Bell for At Home With Music, a national PBS broadcast and live album release on Sony Classical. This season, Mr. Dugan continues his collaboration with Mr. Bell, touring to Wigmore Hall, Taipei’s National Theater and Concert Hall, and the Kennedy Center. Mr. Dugan made his San Francisco Symphony debut in 2017, and appears as piano soloist on the SFS Media recording of Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 4 with Michael Tilson Thomas.
Equally at home in classical, jazz, and pop, Mr. Dugan has collaborated with Jesse Colin Young, Renée Fleming, and Paquito D’Rivera. With his wife, mezzo-soprano Kara Dugan, he has appeared at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, WQXR’s Greene Space, and on PBS Great Performances’ Now Hear This. With baritone John Brancy, he has given recitals at Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, and the Kennedy Center; won first prize at the 2018 Montreal International Music Competition; and recorded The Journey Home: Live from the Kennedy Center for Avie Records. He also recently recorded PaganiniXSchuman with violinist Sean Lee, featuring the 24 Niccolò Paganini Caprices with piano parts written by Robert Schumann.
Mr. Dugan is the founding creator of the children’s opera Operation Superpower, head of the artist in residence program at pianoSonoma, and a founding faculty member of the Resonance and Soundboard Institutes at Honeywell Arts Academy. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Juilliard School and is a Yamaha Artist.
10/2022
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