Joshua Bell

Josef Gingold took Joshua Bell as a pupil in Bloomington when the boy was twelve; at fourteen he was playing with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Riccardo Muti, and at seventeen he made his Carnegie Hall debut with the St Louis Symphony. Since 2011 he has been Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, the first musician to hold the post after Neville Marriner, and he leads the orchestra from the violin on tour in Europe, Asia and the United States. His recordings take in the central concerto repertoire, chamber music with regular partners such as Steven Isserlis and Jeremy Denk, and film work — he played John Corigliano's score for The Red Violin. He was made an honorary CBE in 2025. He plays the 1713 Gibson ex-Huberman Stradivarius. His association with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields began in 1986, when he recorded the Bruch and Mendelssohn concertos with the orchestra under Marriner; the Beethoven symphonies and an all-Bach album he later directed himself, and Bruch's Scottish Fantasy brought him a Grammy nomination in 2019. For the 2023-24 season he commissioned The Elements, five pieces by Jake Heggie, Jennifer Higdon, Edgar Meyer, Jessie Montgomery and Kevin Puts, and played them with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra and the orchestras of New York, Hong Kong, Chicago and Seattle. The Stradivarius is paired with a bow by François Xavier Tourte. He was appointed the New Jersey Symphony’s inaugural Principal Guest Conductor beginning with the 2025–26 season.