With a career spanning almost four 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 Empireby King Charles III for services to Music.

In the 2025-26 season, Bell continues to champion the rediscovered Violin Concerto by Thomas de Hartmann, following his recent Diapason d’Or-winning world premiere recording of the work. After giving its UK premiere at London’s BBC Proms, he gives the concerto’s North American premiere with the New York Philharmonic, performs it with the Boston Symphony and Oslo Philharmonic, and gives its Canadian premiere during his season-long tenure as a Toronto Symphony Spotlight Artist. He leads extensive tours with ASMF, including returns to Vienna Konzerthaus and New York’s Carnegie Hall. Other orchestral highlights include his first appearances as Principal Guest Conductor of the New Jersey Symphony; concerto dates with the Houston Symphony, Oregon Symphony, and Baltimore Symphony; and concerts and an Asian tour with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. An avid recitalist, Bell joins Steven Isserlis and Evgeny Kissin for trio programs in the U.S. and Europe, and reunites with Jeremy Denk for duo programs at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Ravinia Festival.

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 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 launched at TED2025 with the aim of empowering the next generation of artists.

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’s many collaborators include Emanuel Ax, Chris Botti, Chick Corea, Renée Fleming, Josh Groban, Lang Lang, Dave Matthews, Anoushka Shankar, Regina Spektor, Sting, and Daniil Trifonov.

As an exclusive Sony Classical artist, Bell has recorded more than 40 albums, winning Grammy, Mercury, Gramophone, Diapason d’Or, and Opus Klassik awards. He 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 film soundtracks, including Ladies in Lavender (2004) and Defiance (2008). He has also made three guest star appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and numerous appearances on the Amazon series Mozart in the Jungle.

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. He is actively involved with Education Through Music and Turnaround Arts and has partnered with Trala, the techpowered violin learning app. The Joshua Bell Virtual Violin, created through an ongoing partnership with leading virtual instrument sampling company Embertone, is widely considered the best virtual instrument of its kind.

Born in Bloomington, Indiana, Bell began playing the violin at the age of four and started 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 has also 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. He participated in former president Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ first cultural mission to Cuba and the subsequent Emmy-nominated PBS Live from Lincoln Center special.

Bell performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin.