Biography

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.