Music beat
Joshua Bell's mom beams about latest honor

Joshua Bell

BLOOMINGTON — On Tuesday evening, in a lavish celebration at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Bloomington’s Joshua Bell will become the 2007 recipient of the Avery Fisher Prize, one of classical music’s most esteemed honors, awarded for outstanding achievement and excellence.

The frantically busy Bell has been on tour with the distinguished orchestra called Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, serving as its director and solo violinist. Just last Sunday, he and that ensemble performed in Carnegie Hall, offering a program containing Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and what he played and directed in the Musical Arts Center last summer, Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons.” He’s off to Europe in a week or so for more concertizing.

About the Fisher recognition, he relayed this message to me: “I’ll never forget when Avery Fisher called me in my home in Indiana 20 years ago to tell me that I had been chosen to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant. It was the highlight of my career at the time, and now I’ve been blessed with another, the coveted Avery Fisher Prize. I have watched with admiration as my musical heroes have received this award over the years, and now to have my name added beside those of Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Emanuel Ax is a great honor.”

Josh Bell names double bassist Meyer, a friend and colleague who shares IU connections with him. Among other previous recipients is pianist Andre Watts, now member of the Jacobs School of Music faculty.

And when, on Tuesday, the name of this year’s Avery Fisher Career Grant is also to be revealed, it will belong to another IU graduate. Though I know who the winner is, I’m pledged to not reveal that person’s identity. Previous career grant winners with IU ties include, along with Bell and Meyer, cellists Sharon Robinson (now a member of the Jacobs faculty), Gary Hoffman, and Mark Kosower; pianists Frederic Chiu, Jeremy Denk and Jonathan Biss, and violinist Tai Murray.

Back here in Bloomington, Josh Bell’s prize, which includes $75,000 and the chiseling of his name on a marble plaque in Avery Fisher Hall, was received jubilantly by his mother.

“When I’m asked about how proud I am, which is often,” Shirley Bell tells me, “it’s hard to answer. Josh is the only son I know, and I love him dearly, as I do his two sisters. So much has come his way: the Grammys, the Governor’s Arts Award, the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame, his being named Indiana Living Legend. Of course, I’m proud, but not only of his musical accomplishments. I’m proud of him as a person, and that’s why I’m thrilled about the Avery Fisher. It shows he’s gained the respect of his peers. I think it’s really well deserved and comes because he’s made great contributions to music as a soloist, a chamber musician, which has become his first love, and now his conducting forays. He calls that ‘leading,’ not conducting, and he’s been doing that for three years with the St. Paul Orchestra as its music director.

“He’s also done so much educationally,” Shirley Bell adds. “He loves to work with young musicians and to give master classes. He’s been an adjunct professor at MIT in artificial intelligence. You might call him a 21st century musician who’s branched out and contributed beyond the classical. Composers are always asking to write for him, and they do.”

She recalls the little boy in Ruth Boshkoff’s preschool program, learning about rhythm through the Orff method, and his first holding a violin, which “he took to.” She speaks of a youngster always “master of his environment,” whether mimicking Michael Jackson’s moonwalk or catching flies in midair, solving the Rubik’s cube or throwing a ball, playing tennis or making his debut at 14 with the Philadelphia Orchestra.

“Other activities were taken up, mastered and dropped,” says Shirley Bell. “With the violin, there was always more to learn, and that kept him going.”

She labels her son “a bit of an enigma. He was a shy child, a quiet leader in school. But he could explode into fun and become outspoken. He’s not an extrovert, but people are drawn to him somehow. And of course, as he’s gotten older, he’s grown in so many directions.”

She worries about her Josh. “He’s overworked. He does too much,” she says. “I don’t want the body to break down. Playing the violin is not a natural activity for the body to handle. He has a massage therapist, which helps, but I’m concerned. I wish he could just slow down, even settle down.”

Though not a violinist herself, Shirley Bell, who studied piano with the late Karl Haas of radio fame, explains she’s made the instrument “my listening interest.” She sat in on Joseph Gingold’s master classes even after her son was no longer taking lessons from that master teacher.

Speaking of her son’s violin playing, she says, “He has a particular sound with a flexible vibrato and elegance, sophistication. It’s distinctive, and he never tries too hard to make an effect. He’s a deep musician, too, always growing. He’s also increasingly comfortable with himself. As for his interpretations, those of today are not that far removed from those of his earlier years. They’re more refined, of course, but musically, he was there from the start. He had an ability to understand what he played.”

Does she critique him? “When he asks,” she says. And though she doesn’t travel with him, when he asks her to come to a concert — as he did to last Sunday’s in Carnegie Hall — she tries to do so.

“It’s hard to keep up with him. He calls at least once a week, but sometimes also from an airport or cab. He’s so grounded and so loyal to his family. We, my late husband and I, could never have imagined how his career has taken off. Thank goodness, he still loves to have fun, even while he never lets down on his commitments.”

On Tuesday, Shirley Bell will be at Lincoln Center to watch that son of hers mark another important milestone in his life. “It’s been a trip for us,” she says, “and a joy. I’m humbled by Josh’s talent and by him as a human being.”

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The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.