Top 100 Joshua Bell Quotes
#1. 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
#2. There are days that I get neurotic with the violin. Every little adjustment will change the balance for good or for bad. It's kind of a miracle, the way the whole thing works as an acoustical whole, so perfectly balanced.
Joshua Bell
#3. We live in the least ugly time in history.
Joshua Bell
#4. 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
#5. 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
#6. It's different for people who have not seen a symphony conductor conduct from a chair. I feel very connected to the orchestra in a way that a conductor sometimes does not feel. I think it's more visceral.
Joshua Bell
#7. People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.
Joshua Bell
#8. Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.
Joshua Bell
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. I like blackjack. I like the psychology of poker.
Joshua Bell
#12. I love celebrating music in different and unique ways.
Joshua Bell
#13. Hamburgers are my favorite thing to eat, period.
Joshua Bell
#14. There are some days I take my violin out and it feels dreadful, like nothing is responding, and I want to sell it and get rid of it. And the next day suddenly the skies open up and the sound is glorious again. So it's like a relationship: There are good days and bad days.
Joshua Bell
#15. Bach's music is really some of the greatest. I think, in some ways, Bach is the most profound composer of all.
Joshua Bell
#16. 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
#17. I think, as an artist, it's very important to continue to be challenged and feel challenged all the time.
Joshua Bell
#18. It's endless, the amount of things that music touches on that can help kids grow that are very, very practical.
Joshua Bell
#19. As far as doing TV, I do think there's a big audience out there that could enjoy classical music, but they don't know how to find it, and sometimes by doing different things ... crossover things probably make up about 5% of what I do.
Joshua Bell
#20. I grew up in a musical environment. My parents played music and had it playing on the radio. They brought me to a concert at the age of 5, the same age I started violin lessons.
Joshua Bell
#22. Music plays a huge role in the movie. The music in Star Wars, I can't imagine what the movie would have been like without it. It made the film.
Joshua Bell
#23. I think music should be the basis of an education, not just something you do once a week.
Joshua Bell
#24. I'm not a businessman, so I don't know how to solve the problems of the recording industry.
Joshua Bell
#25. What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do.
Joshua Bell
#26. My whole life, I've been watching conductors. I was 7 the first time I played with a conductor. Seeing the ones that do it well, it's an amazing thing.
Joshua Bell
#27. In concertos, I stand up, and I conduct with the bow when I'm not playing. During symphonies, I sit, but sometimes I stop playing to conduct. Being seated in a section allows me to feel more like we're playing chamber music, which is how I like to approach it.
Joshua Bell
#28. As my career has gone on, I guess I've become more well known. I'm playing to fuller halls in general, which is a nice feeling. When you're doing that, you're going to have a certain number of people who are not just the hardcore classical fanatics, and this makes me very happy.
Joshua Bell
#29. When you hear extraneous noise, they are bored in some way, so it makes me upset. Even coughing, I find, is passive-aggressive, usually.
Joshua Bell
#30. I've been touring for 25 years. I'm used to it, so I love it. Although I feel the tug of home, as I have three little kids, I don't suffer like some artists who constantly complain about how much they hate traveling.
Joshua Bell
#31. I started directing chamber orchestras, then adding bigger pieces, adding winds, adding small symphonies. I've always loved chamber music, and I've done a lot.
Joshua Bell
#32. You're a constant student, as a musician.
Joshua Bell
#33. I like trying things, I am kind of adventurous and I like thrill seeking.
Joshua Bell
#34. I open up my violin case every day, and have one of the great creations. It is very inspiring. It makes you want to practice. How can you open up a case and look at a violin that was made in 1713 by one of the greatest artists in history and then say, "No, I don't feel like practicing today."
Joshua Bell
#35. So many times, I've seen conductors that, every time they have a thought, they stop the orchestra and say it, and I can see the orchestra rolling their eyes and saying, 'Oh, God, he stopped again.' So there's a technique to rehearsing.
Joshua Bell
#36. 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
#37. Everyone's definition of what God means can vary. But music is something that really takes you to that - 'sublime' is a great word. That thing that is greater than we are. The beauty, the magic of the universe.
Joshua Bell
#39. In a way, the highest praise you could give to a composer like Bach was to take and make your own arrangement; it was sort of an homage to that composer and to his work, so it wasn't considered sacrilegious to do something like that.
Joshua Bell
#40. The man on the street, he knows who Beethoven is, he knows who Mozart is.
Joshua Bell
#41. 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
#42. If you mess up the tiniest little thing in the Beethoven concerto, or the phrasing isn't just exactly perfectly executed, Beethoven brings out the worst in the best violinist. You almost never hear a satisfying performance, because it doesn't play itself.
Joshua Bell
#43. Over the years, I've collected a lot of musical friends.
Joshua Bell
#44. 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
#45. In 1987, I had no idea who Steven Isserlis was. We met at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It was originally just an Italian summer festival, but for the past 14 years, there's also been a spring festival in America.
Joshua Bell
#46. In those projects with Sting and Josh Groban and people like that, I see a very interesting effect: their fans coming to my classical concerts, people who've never been to a classical show at all.
Joshua Bell
#47. I'm addicted to the adrenaline of performing, and I think when you're used to having that high, you look for it in other things.
Joshua Bell
#48. If I read every comment on my YouTube videos, I'd go crazy with people that are saying negative things.
Joshua Bell
#49. Over the years, I've seen how being a soloist and having a family can really work.
Joshua Bell
#50. It's very hard to find a pianist that's willing to play the so-called accompanist role on part of the program and yet be capable of being a great solo pianist that you would want for the big sonatas.
Joshua Bell
#51. When Beethoven's Seventh Symphony was premiered, after the second movement, they clapped so much that they had the repeat the second movement and do it again.
Joshua Bell
#52. 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
#53. You're really looking for the truth of what the piece is about. And that's going to be different for different people.
Joshua Bell
#54. Music is a continual learning process. One finds new insights all the time. For me, it began at a very early age; from the beginning, there was something besides the notes.
Joshua Bell
#55. My teacher, Josef Gingold, a student of the French school, always loved the music of Saint-Saens and Henri Vieuxtemps and all the French repertoire.
Joshua Bell
#56. I love pressure in a different sort of way; I enjoy the pressure of getting out and performing for the public. Being compared and judged doesn't seem quite right to me.
Joshua Bell
#57. I love the outdoor festival feeling. When I'm on stage, it's very gratifying to watch people on the lawns enjoying the music with a glass of wine.
Joshua Bell
#58. Although I hardly ever turn on the TV set unless it's football season, I do watch a lot of TV on my iPad - perfect for long airplane journeys.
Joshua Bell
#59. I kind of alternate between conducting and playing and kind of juggling those things, but I don't use a baton.
Joshua Bell
#60. I happen to love Saint-Saens in general. I think he's a brilliant composer and sometimes underrated in a way because people like to pass him off as fluffy and not being serious.
Joshua Bell
#61. Playing the Beethoven symphonies, for example, is a consummate experience for a musician because Beethoven speaks so directly to who we are as people.
Joshua Bell
#62. So much of performing is a mind game. You're memorizing thousands of notes, and if you start thinking about it in the wrong way, everything can blow up in your face.
Joshua Bell
#63. Anyone who knows classical music and loves classical music has heard the Beethoven Seventh hundreds of times probably in their life.
Joshua Bell
#64. 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
#65. I learned early on how to make best use of my time. You know, quality is more important than quantity when it comes to practice time. And unfortunately, I still need to practice a lot.
Joshua Bell
#66. 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
#67. Beethoven's fourth and seventh symphonies have a certain amount in common. Well, of course they're both written by Beethoven, but besides that, I would say their overall effect and idea is to provide the listener with an incredible sense of joy.
Joshua Bell
#68. I don't sleep with a violin in my bed, but there is something very magical about the instrument. You open up the case; it's a masterpiece, it's gorgeous, the varnish is still there from 300 years ago. People who know violins, they look at it and it's almost like a face.
Joshua Bell
#69. 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
#70. I want to do everything. That's my problem.
Joshua Bell
#71. Every orchestra is different. Sometimes, you're blown away by a particular musician. If I'm playing the Brahms concerto, it's crucial to have a great oboe player, because we work in tandem.
Joshua Bell
#72. No one tells you what to do if you completely flop at the beginning of a performance.
Joshua Bell
#73. I approach everything as chamber music. Even with Beethoven symphonies, I lead from the violin and basically encourage the orchestra to think of it as a giant string quartet.
Joshua Bell
#74. As far as I'm concerned, the stakes are always very high. Whether it's playing at the White House or playing for a group in my own house - you know, one of those soirees I play in. Once I start playing, the stakes are somehow higher, in a way, than any of the context.
Joshua Bell
#75. 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
#76. You don't have to have lots of love affairs to know what love is.
Joshua Bell
#77. 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
#78. I'm happy if my music is being downloaded, whether it's legally or illegally.
Joshua Bell
#79. I think - I'm always interested in reaching people in different ways, not by - not by just standing on a - randomly on a subway platform.
Joshua Bell
#80. I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity.
Joshua Bell
#81. When I was 12, that's when I went to college. All my friends were 20, 21, and I was 12. It didn't even occur to me that that was strange.
Joshua Bell
#82. I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.
Joshua Bell
#83. I don't listen to a lot of music when I have my free time. But I'll go to a jazz club and have a drink and listen to a good jazz musician. Or sometimes in the morning, if I want to put myself in a good mood, I'll put on some Latin music.
Joshua Bell
#84. 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
#85. I can't play on a full stomach, so I save my eating for after the concert.
Joshua Bell
#86. I'm having a blast being the music director at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. It certainly is challenging for me, but I love challenges.
Joshua Bell
#87. Kids need to be structured in some way, but you don't want to force something down their throats that they have no interest in. You have to find the right balance.
Joshua Bell
#88. 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
#89. Actors want to do Shakespeare again and again, or want to do Hamlet. When you hear one guy do Hamlet and another guy do it, it's going to be a whole different experience.
Joshua Bell
#90. I have visited schools that have music programs and those that don't. I see the way the kids act with each other.
Joshua Bell
#91. I always have loved the Stradivarius. My teacher, Josef Gingold, he had a Stradivarius. As a treat, he would put it under my chin and let me play a few notes, and I remember that feeling of the overtones, the complexity of the sound. It's like a great wine.
Joshua Bell
#92. When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story.
Joshua Bell
#93. It's been very exciting for me to start directing and conducting, exploring the symphonic repertoire, which I've always loved.
Joshua Bell
#94. 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
#95. You might think that after 40 years of practice you wouldn't need to practice anymore, but sadly it doesn't work that way. You still have to keep chugging away and perfecting.
Joshua Bell
#96. Music teaches people to work together, which is maybe one of the most important skills.
Joshua Bell
#97. 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
#98. 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
#99. I write arrangements. I'm sort of a wannabe composer.
Joshua Bell
#100. I think you can appreciate different interpretations. Art is not a contest. I can even appreciate hearing someone play something in a way that I wouldn't.
Joshua Bell
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