Indiana boy

Back in 1995, while browsing through magazines at Barnes & Noble, my eye was caught by a magazine I'd never seen before called Strings. On the cover was what appeared to be a teenaged violinist. Not only the cover article (actually, a lengthy, in-depth interview), but the entire magazine looked interesting, and so I bought a copy. Which I still own.

The violinist was not a teenager, however. He was a young man of 27 by the name of Joshua Bell. Today, Bell is perhaps the best known violinist in the United States, if not the world. Last night, I heard him in concert for the second time in my life, this time playing the Bruch Violin Concerto with the Seattle Symphony.

The Strings article noted:

The identifying traits of Bell's playing are a honeyed yet not overly viscous tone, uncompromising beauty of sound without a favoring of tone quality over musical rhetoric, a keen attention to local detail within a firm sense of overall musical architecture ...

I'm no music critic, obviously, but insofar as I can judge, these remain his characterists today, and were well displayed in his performance of the lush, hyper-Romantic Bruch concerto.

In his Strings interview, Bell sounded American in a way that no performer born in Europe could ever sound. He grew up a Hoosier, the son of an Indiana University professor. He was a fan of tennis and basketball. He rambled on for a paragraph, extolling the joys of golf, which he claimed was "really more than a sport -- it's almost Zenlike, the focus in every shot." And he proudly admitted to ranking fourth in the nation in a computer pinball simulation called Crystal Caliburn. He said he was eager to beat the No. 1 score "which is by some guy from Eugene, Oregon."

Last night, Bell walked onto the stage, dressed informally in black, a mop of dark hair falling down his forehead, and greeted the audience with a seemingly shy smirk. He was called back by thunderous applause for approximately seven bows before finally returning with his violin to play a solo encore. I didn't catch the name of the encore selection, but it was a short piece, well post-Romantic, that revealed the many sounds that Bell can generate from a violin -- and the speedy tempo at which he is capable of bowing.

Joshua Bell is now 44. He's the father of a four-year-old son, but still looks like a kid from Indiana himself. His name is known to anyone with the slightest interest in symphonic music.¹ Since 1995, I've collected most of the CD's featuring his playing, including all of the major violin concertos. Despite obvious sophistication, he still looks like a guy who, when he gets the time, shoots a few hoops and challenges a few unsuspecting victims to on-line pinball. And probably lets out a whoop when he wins.

One post a year about a concert is probably all most readers can tolerate. My apologies for two of them in one week, but last night's concert was an exceptional event.
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¹But in a famous experiment in 2007, he spent 45 minutes playing six Bach pieces unannounced in the Washington, D.C., subway. Video cameras caught 1,097 riders walking past him. Seven stopped to listen, and only one recognized him. He collected a total of $32.17 from 27 passers-by. Two days earlier, concert-goers had spent an average of $100 each to hear him play in a sold-out Boston concert.