For me, music has been, in a sense, my religion, and it is what brings me closest to God or truth or whatever you want to call it. – Joshua Bell
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
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
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
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
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
When you start reading a piece together, you get a sense of someone’s basic philosophy of music without saying a word. You realize the other person’s approach, how they express themselves, the kind of restraint they show, all those things. – Joshua Bell
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
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
After every concert, I greet young people in the lobbies. And I see a huge surge of young people playing music. – Joshua Bell
Music is such an incredible tool for kids in general. They learn discipline; they learn how to express themselves. You learn math. You learn language. It’s the ideal teaching tool, and that’s why it’s mind-boggling when any school superintendent decides that music is something we can kind of do without. – Joshua Bell
A conductor can do wild things which can feel forced, but if you’re directing from within the orchestra, you can’t do that, things have to feel natural. – Joshua Bell
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
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
The one thing in my contract that they have backstage for me is bananas. And usually my assistant will go and get me chicken broth. – Joshua Bell
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
Obviously, I want it to be legally downloaded, and I myself have spent a fortune on iTunes because, for me, that’s the easiest way to get music. – Joshua Bell
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
I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity. – Joshua Bell
Music – you need the give and take from the audience, the feeling of attention. It’s not about me: it’s about the music itself. – Joshua Bell
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
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
Art and music is part of what it means to be a human being. And if you’re neglecting that, you’re basically ignoring a huge side of the brain and a huge side of what it means to be human. – Joshua Bell
We live in a very chaotic world that sometimes we – it just seems like a mess. One of the reasons why we listen to music, and to great classical music in particular, is that everything is in an order and in a place and has a beauty that you see in nature, that you see and that people look for when they look for God. – Joshua Bell
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