Joshua Bell, violin | Peter Dugan, piano

Joshua Bell, violin
With a career spanning almost four decades, GRAMMY® Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell is one of the most celebrated artists of his era. Having performed with virtually every major orchestra in the world, Bell continues to maintain engagements as soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, conductor and Music Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields.

Bell’s highlights in the 2022-23 season include leading the Academy of St Martin in the Fields on tour in South America to Sao Paulo, Bogotá, and Montevideo as well in Europe, in Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Denmark, and the United Kingdom. Joshua appears in guest performances with the Berlin Philharmonic, Orchestre National de France, Sofia Philharmonic, Franz Schubert Filharmonia as well as a European tour with pianist Peter Dugan. This season in the U.S., Bell will perform alongside the New York Philharmonic, as well as the San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Houston, Baltimore, and New Jersey Symphony Orchestras.

Bell has been named 2010 “Instrumentalist of the Year” by Musical America, a 2007 “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum, nominated for six GRAMMY® awards, and received the 2007 Avery Fisher Prize. He has also received the 2003 Indiana Governor’s Arts Award and a Distinguished Alumni Service Award in 1991 from the Jacobs School of Music. In 2000, he was named an “Indiana Living Legend.” He has performed for three American presidents and the sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Bell also participated in former president Barack Obama’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities’ first cultural mission to Cuba, joining Cuban and American musicians on a 2017 Live from Lincoln Center Emmy-nominated PBS special, Joshua Bell: Seasons of Cuba, celebrating renewed cultural diplomacy between Cuba and the United States.

Peter Dugan, piano
Pianist Peter Dugan’s debut performances with Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony were described by the Los Angeles Times as “stunning” and by the SF Chronicle as “fearlessly athletic.” He is heard every week across America as the host of National Public Radio’s beloved program From the Top. Mr. Dugan has appeared as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician across North America and abroad. In 2020, he joined acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell for At Home With Music, a national PBS broadcast and live album release on Sony Classical. This season Mr. Dugan continues his collaboration with Bell, touring internationally with recitals at London's Wigmore Hall, Taipei’s National Theater and Concert Hall, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Prizing stylistic versatility as the hallmark of a 21st century musician, Mr. Dugan is equally at home in classical, jazz, and pop idioms, and has collaborated with artists ranging from Jesse Colin Young, to Renee Fleming, to Paquito D'Rivera. Mr. Dugan performs regularly in partnership with friends and artists who share a passion for expanding the world of classical music. The Wall Street Journal described Mr. Dugan’s collaboration with violinist and vocalist Charles Yang as a “classical-meets-rockstar duo.” In Mr. Dugan’s performances with his wife, mezzo-soprano Kara Dugan, repertoire ranges from art song, to American Songbook, to original songs and world premieres. The Dugans have appeared at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, WQXR’s Greene Space, and on PBS Great Performances’ Now Hear This.


Mr. Dugan advocates for a classical music culture that is inclusive and welcoming to all, from a community's concert halls and theaters, to its schools and hospitals. As a founding creator of Operation Superpower, a superhero opera for children, he has travelled to dozens of schools in the greater New York area, performing for students and encouraging them to use their talents – their superpowers – for good. He is head of the Artist in Residence program at piano Sonoma and a founding faculty member of the Resonance and Soundboard Institutes at Honeywell Arts Academy.

Program:

Beethoven: Violin Sonata No. 1 in D Major, Op. 12

Prokofiev: Violin Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80

Intermission

Franck: Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano