by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Features Editor

February 5, 2009

Joshua Bell’s career as a violin virtuoso was almost over before it got started. As a kid growing up in Bloomington, Ind., Bell was practicing his latest hobby — boomerang tossing — shortly before his first major recital. The results were predictable for anyone who’s ever seen a Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

“It came back and hit me on the chin, right where I hold the violin,” Bell recalled during a telephone press conference in January. The incident necessitated a trip to the emergency room, but the show went on. “Another inch, and I would have been unable to play.”

The loss of another boomerang aficionado was the music world’s gain. At the age of 40, Bell is one of the hottest violinists on the recording and performing circuit, an assertion that has been documented by his inclusion as one of Glamour’s “‘It’ Men of the Millennium” in 1999 and People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful” in 2000. He has recorded more than 30 albums, often using his 1713 Stradivarius. Among his numerous awards is a 2000 Grammy for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra for his work on Nicholas Maw: Violin Concerto.

These days, Bell can be heard as the solo violinist on the soundtrack for Defiance, which has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Director Edward Zwick and composer James Newton Howard, who wrote the score, were eager to have Bell on board for their project. They sent him a DVD of the movie, hoping to entice him to play. Howard also sent along some musical ideas.

“I was moved by the story; I found it incredible,” Bell said. “I felt it was significant enough for the violin to do it.”

The story of the Bielski brothers — Jewish partisans who saved the lives of more than a thousand other Jews in the forests of Belarus during the Holocaust — had a more personal meaning for him. “My maternal grandmother was born very near where it took place,” said Bell, “so I suppose that connection is an added reason why it intrigued me.”

The creative process continued during the recording sessions. “The notes are [on the page], but once we’re in the studio — because we’re not playing something from Beethoven for the soundtrack — with the composer there, we can change things. The fun part is asking, how can we make this better? Would it be more dramatic if we take it up an octave or add a double stop? I enjoy that process.”

The director was also deeply involved in the process. Zwick “was very hands-on with the music,” said Bell. “I think most good directors realize that the music plays an important part in the emotional effect.”

‘Happy with the music’

Bell has played at large venues around the world but admitted he was nervous attending a screening of Defiance in Los Angeles. “It was a little nerve-wracking seeing it for the first time with an audience and not knowing if they had chosen my best bits or not.

“The film certainly was very emotional,” he said. “You don’t know when you’re in the studio, doing little bits here and there, how it will come out; you don’t get an idea what [the whole piece] will sound like. In the end, I was happy with the music that was used to enhance the story.”

In a follow-up e-mail to NJ Jewish News, Bell said he was “very pleased” to learn that Howard had received an Oscar nomination for best original score. “Playing my small part in the telling of this remarkable story was a privilege.”

He enjoys the core classical musical repertoires: Beethoven, Brahms, and Bach — “One could spend a lifetime just doing only them” — but his recordings run the gamut from show tunes to Appalachian bluegrass. “Those are peripheral things, but they improve my classical playing,” by throwing different rhythms and improvisations into the mix.

“Classical music itself is so varied…. You’re wearing many, many hats, going from one language of music to another. It’s a very natural thing. I don’t even think of them as necessarily departures; it’s just all part of music-making.”

Despite his hectic schedule — including a performance at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark tomorrow, Feb. 6 — Bell tries to maintain a “normal life.” The Manhattan resident has not abandoned his love for sports, even at the risk of his vocation. After the calamitous incident as a child, he said, “My mother told me she was debating whether to say ‘You shouldn’t be playing with a boomerang,’ but she decided to let me be a kid.” He still participates in tennis (he was an Indiana state junior tennis champion), golf, and the occasional basketball game.

Bell acknowledged the potential dangers his hobbies might invite. “So far I haven’t had any serious injuries. But you have to live. You can’t go around worrying all the time that something’s gonna happen.”

Comment: comments@njjewishnews.com

--TOP--