Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell will perform at 7:30 pm on Friday, Apr 24 in a special concert at Chenery Auditorium, presented by the Gilmore Piano Festival. The evening celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Stulberg International String Competition — a milestone Bell finds personally resonant. He first entered the competition as a 12-year-old growing up in Bloomington, Indiana, winning third place, then returned the following year to take first.
"The Stulberg Competition had a very deep impact on my life as a tween, I guess, and a teen," Bell tells Cara Lieurance. "That competition gave me a certain validation that was very welcome and I just have such great fond memories of that time."
The program features four violin sonatas — by Schubert, Grieg, Prokofiev, and Ravel — performed alongside pianist Shai Wosner. Bell describes the selection as a deliberate showcase of how vast and varied the classical canon truly is. "These composers just have such different things to say," he explains, noting that each sonata draws on distinct folk, jazz, and dance influences. Prokofiev's third movement nods to jazz, while Ravel's middle movement — which the composer himself labels "blues" — demands a careful rhythmic touch. "I think we classical musicians can make the error of thinking, oh, it's jazz now, so I can do whatever I want," Bell says, emphasizing the need for restraint and stylistic precision in Ravel's music.
Bell and Wosner connected through cellist Steven Isserlis and later kept crossing paths at their children's school in New York City. Bell praises Wosner not only as a pianist but as a composer-thinker: Wosner recently completed a fragment of a Grieg piano quintet he discovered unfinished.
Bell also speaks about his expanding conducting career with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, where he serves as Music Director, noting that he has now led eight of the nine Beethoven symphonies. He reflects on what makes live performance irreplaceable: "We walk on stage, we don't really know fully what's going to happen. That's really, really fun."
With a laugh, Bell acknowledges the particular charge of returning to Kalamazoo. "It's back to the scene of the crime," he says — a city where, half a century ago, his concert career first began to take shape.
Tickets and more information are available at the Gilmore Piano Festival website.
The interview was summarized by Claude AI and edited by the author.
