I want to do everything. That’s my problem. Life is short, and I hate the idea of turning down anything. You never know what interesting experience might happen.
Joshua Bell
When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you’re telling a story.
Joshua Bell
I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.
Joshua Bell
I think it’s really important to always kind of stretch your boundaries and your limits and get out of your comfort zone. And for me, that’s very important.
Joshua Bell
There was a time, early on in my career, when it was very important for me to be liked by everyone. It meant that I was musically less honest with myself.
Joshua Bell
After every concert, I greet young people in the lobbies. And I see a huge surge of young people playing music.
Joshua Bell
We live in a very chaotic world that sometimes we – it just seems like a mess. One of the reasons why we listen to music, and to great classical music in particular, is that everything is in an order and in a place and has a beauty that you see in nature, that you see and that people look for when they look for God.
Joshua Bell
Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal – the vision, the structure, the architecture.
Joshua Bell
It’s interesting about classical music that the more you hear something, the more you get to know a piece, the better and better it gets, period, which is just an interesting thing on it.
Joshua Bell
I use Facebook quite a lot to keep up with my friends, although I had to delete ‘Words With Friends’ from my phone because it was wasting too much of my time.
Joshua Bell
I use Facebook quite a lot to keep up with my friends, although I had to delete ‘Words With Friends’ from my phone because it was wasting too much of my time.
Joshua Bell
The violin sings.
Joshua Bell
What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I’m continuing to do. You want to push boundaries, to not always be in your comfort zone. If you don’t, you get stale. So you have to find areas of growth.
Joshua Bell
I do basically what a conductor does with a baton, except I also play along with the orchestra. So I have to juggle the roles of playing the concertmaster; sometimes I drop the violin and wave my arms.
Joshua Bell
I mean, the great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them.
Joshua Bell
I don’t want to portray myself as a daredevil. I’m not at all.
Joshua Bell
Criticism is always hard to take – we musicians are sensitive. It’s always hard when someone says something negative – but you try to learn to just let it roll off and not worry about it.
Joshua Bell
I like trying things, I am kind of adventurous and I like thrill seeking.
Joshua Bell
Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you’re neglecting that, you’re basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human.
Joshua Bell
We like to categorize things into showy things and deep things, you know, and things that are high music – important music – and shallow music. And I think that’s dangerous, because there’s often a mix of both.
Joshua Bell
Music – you need the give and take from the audience, the feeling of attention. It’s not about me: it’s about the music itself.
Joshua Bell
The great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them. But there are conductors that actually inhibit the players from playing with each other properly.
Joshua Bell
I’ve always been accused of moving around too much when I play concertos. Sometimes, conductors ask me which of us is leading.
Joshua Bell
As far as I’m concerned, I want to do everything because life is short. So, when I did ‘The Red Violin’ film, I got to go to the Oscars, and I got to meet Samuel Jackson, and I got to do stuff that one wouldn’t normally do in my world.
Joshua Bell
I know how to deal with jet lag, and I know just how much rest I need and when I need to take naps. When you walk on stage, you need your brain working at its highest and most fully-functioning, so it’s not always easy, but I sort of figure it out.
Joshua Bell
Hamburgers are my favorite thing to eat, period.
Joshua Bell
Being a director or a conductor is a balance of many things. And to do it right is a very difficult tightrope to walk. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s really no way to be one hundred percent popular as conductor.
Joshua Bell
At a music hall, I’ll get upset if someone coughs or if someone’s cellphone goes off.
Joshua Bell
For some reason I can’t explain, artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music, you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you’re doing and keep your imagination open. That’s a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.
Joshua Bell
I like blackjack. I like the psychology of poker.
Joshua Bell
Stradivarius, in particular, was the most amazing craftsman and one of the great artists and scientists that ever lived because he figured out something with the sound and the science of acoustics that we still don’t understand it completely.
Joshua Bell
The beauty of a Stradivarius is that you can play in Carnegie Hall without any amplification, and it has this – the sound has, inside it, has something that projects, and it has multifaceted sound, something that kind of gets lost when you use amplification anyway.
Joshua Bell
When I hear people clapping at the wrong times, I think that’s great. We have got a listener that’s not used to going to – we have got a new listener.
Joshua Bell
The one thing in my contract that they have backstage for me is bananas. And usually my assistant will go and get me chicken broth.
Joshua Bell
The real architecture happens within the works themselves, and that was done by the composer. That’s where the real skill is. In putting together a program, you’re more a curator, but that’s important as well. And then the interpreting of it is where our big job is.
Joshua Bell
I associate music with fun and joy.
Joshua Bell
Conducting is a strange thing to teach. There are very few great conducting teachers, and most great conductors don’t teach. Look at Valery Gergiev – what he does is not teachable. A lot of it is on-the-job training, what works and what doesn’t work.
Joshua Bell
When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I’m already accepted.
Joshua Bell
The man on the street, he knows who Beethoven is, he knows who Mozart is.
Joshua Bell
In art and music, particularly in the 20th century, there was a big period there where for something to be called profound you had to not be able to understand it.
Joshua Bell
We live in the least ugly time in history.
Joshua Bell
I write arrangements. I’m sort of a wannabe composer.
Joshua Bell
I grew up in a musical family, but nobody was a professional musician.
Joshua Bell
Over the years, I’ve collected a lot of musical friends.
Joshua Bell
I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don’t get that kind of exposure.
Joshua Bell
I like working with kids because I enjoy seeing the looks on their faces and, it’s kind of selfish, I want a future audience.
Joshua Bell
There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a conductor say, ‘Play softer,’ as they’re waving their hands in huge gestures.
Joshua Bell
You’re a constant student, as a musician.
Joshua Bell
You only live once, so I try to say yes to everything.
Joshua Bell
I love the outdoor festival feeling.
Joshua Bell
I’m in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things.
Joshua Bell
No one tells you what to do if you completely flop at the beginning of a performance.
Joshua Bell
So much of performing is a mind game.
Joshua Bell