Joshua David Bell was born on 9 December 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana, and began the violin as a small child. He studied with Josef Gingold at Indiana University and appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of fourteen. His Carnegie Hall debut followed in his late teens, and he has since performed with most of the world’s major orchestras. Since 2011 he has been music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, which he directs from the violin. He plays the 1713 “Gibson ex Huberman” Stradivarius.

Bell has built one of the most visible violin careers of his generation, combining the standard concerto repertoire with chamber music, contemporary works and film scores. His recordings have won a Grammy Award, and his playing on the soundtrack of the film The Red Violin brought his sound to a wide general audience. In 2007 he took part in a widely reported Washington Post experiment in which he played incognito in a Washington metro station, an episode that prompted broad discussion about art and context. As music director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields he has continued the ensemble’s tradition of conductorless, leader-directed performance.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Bell