Joshua Bell
Principal Guest Conductor
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 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 for services to Music.
In the 2026-27 season, Bell leads two extensive international tours with ASMF, first coupling Dvořák with Mozart in China and Taiwan, then playing and conducting Bruch, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, and Brahms in London, Berlin, 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 marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death. Other highlights include a return to the New York Philharmonic, where he conducts Mendelssohn and leads Vivaldi from the violin; engagements with the Orchestre de Paris and the Boston, Atlanta, and Detroit Symphonies; and a high-profile European recital tour with pianist Peter Dugan.
In 2011, Bell succeeded founder Sir Neville Marriner as Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. He is also the Founder and Music Director of Chamber Orchestra of America (COA), which aims to empower the next generation of artists.
Bell has commissioned and premiered works by John Corigliano, Edgar Meyer, and Nicholas Maw. His recording of Maw’s Violin Concerto won a Grammy Award, and his work on the film soundtrack for The Red Violin helped secure Corigliano’s Academy Award. He also helped bring Thomas de Hartmann’s Violin Concerto to light, making its first recording and giving its UK, North American, and Canadian premieres.
Bell’s collaborators include Emanuel Ax, Chris Botti, Renée Fleming, Josh Groban, Lang Lang, Dave Matthews, Anoushka Shankar, Regina Spektor, Sting, Daniil Trifonov, and the late Chick Corea. He has made three guest-star appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and numerous appearances on the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle. In 2025, Bell gave a TED Talk about the power of live orchestras in today’s tech-filled world. His extensive discography has been recognized with Grammy, Mercury, Gramophone, Diapason D’Or, and Opus Klassik awards.
Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Bell began playing the violin at age four, starting studies with his mentor, Josef Gingold, eight years later. At 14, Bell debuted with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra, and at 17 he made his Carnegie Hall debut with the St. Louis Symphony. He signed with his first label, London Decca, at 18, when he also received the Avery Fisher Career Grant. Since then, Bell has been nominated for six GRAMMY Awards, named “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America, selected as a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, and recognized with the Avery Fisher Prize. He received the 2003 Indiana Governor’s Arts Award and, in 2000, was honored as an “Indiana Living Legend.” Bell has performed for three American presidents and the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. After participating in former president Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ first cultural mission to Cuba, he headlined the subsequent Emmy-nominated PBS Live from Lincoln Center special.
Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin.