1/13/2025
Performances and Artists
Joshua Bell & Larisa Martínez, Credit Shervin Lainez
Violin virtuoso Joshua Bell has been bringing his impressive talents to the stage for almost four decades, performing with virtually every major orchestra in the world and playing for three different U.S. presidents.
When Bell visits The Smith Center for the Performing Arts on March 28, local fans will see him as they never have before: with opera singer Larisa Martínez by his side. The married couple are touring together for the first time with their joint show, Voice and the Violin.
Billed as an evening of beloved romantic arias and modern classics, the concert will feature music by Mendelssohn (“Ah, ritorna, età dell’oro”), Bernstein (“West Side Story Suite”) and Puccini, to name just a few without spoiling too much.
Bell, who performs on the 1713 Huberman Stradivarius violin, is one of the most celebrated artists of his era, having won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (with Orchestra) and been nominated for five additional Grammys.
He participated in the 2016 President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ first cultural mission to Cuba, joining Cuban and American musicians on the Emmy-nominated PBS Live from Lincoln Center special Joshua Bell: Seasons of Cuba, celebrating renewed cultural diplomacy between Cuba and the United States.
And he continues to maintain engagements as a soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor and as the Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.
Martínez has been praised and sought after for her “smoky soprano” (Opera News), gracing many of the world’s top opera and concert stages, including recent performances as a soloist at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl.
Of the husband/wife team’s concert together, Cleveland Classical wrote, “Bell and Martínez’s musical sensibilities were evenly matched, the soprano’s delicate voice fitting well with the violinist’s effortless playing. … Though the program retained the feel of an intimate, 19th-century salon, Bell and Martínez didn’t pass up the chance for some big, impressive moments.”
Bell and Martínez will be accompanied by pianist Peter Dugan.