Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk at GPAC
1/07/08
Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk at GPAC
The Germantown Performing Arts Centre presents Grammy Award winning violinist, Joshua Bell on Saturday, February 16 at 8 p.m. Bell has been dazzling national audiences since the age of 14 when he made his debut at Carnegie Hall. He appears in a recital of works for solo violin with pianist Jeremy Denk on the heels of the overwhelming success of his most recent CD, Voice of the Violin. With star power that transcends classical music, Bell mesmerizes with poetic musicality and adventurous musical interpretations. Don't miss what is sure to be the event of the season!
WHO: Joshua Bell, violin and Jeremy Denk, piano
WHEN: Saturday, February 16, 8 p.m.
TICKETS: Single tickets range from $55 - $100, plus handling fee, and are available now by calling (901) 751-7500 or online at www.GPACweb.com.
Box Office Hours: Monday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., and noon on day of performance. All major credit cards accepted.
WHERE:
Germantown Performing Arts Centre
1801 Exeter Road
Germantown, TN 38138
CONTACT: For more information or to arrange an interview with the artist(s), please contact
Carrie Corbett at (901) 751-7501 or carrie@gpacweb.com.
IMAGES: See attached
ARTIST WEB: www.joshuabell.com; www.jeremydenk.net
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY:
Joshua Bell
Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell was inducted into the Hollywood Bowl Hall of Fame in June 2005. An exclusive Sony Classical artist who has created a large and richly varied catalogue of recordings, Bell swept Billboard Magazine's 2004 honors as "Classical Artist of the Year" with the "Classical Album of the Year" - the best-selling Romance of the Violin.
Bell's 2007-2008 performance season in North America includes concerts with the New York Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke's at Carnegie Hall, and the Boston, Chicago and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, as well as a national recital tour with pianist Jeremy Denk.
For over two decades, Joshua Bell has been captivating audiences worldwide with his poetic musicality. He came to national attention at the age of 14 in a highly acclaimed orchestral debut with Riccardo Muti and the Philadelphia Orchestra. A Carnegie Hall debut, the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and a recording contract further confirmed his unique presence in the music world. Equally at home as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestra leader, Bell's career is exceptionally varied. Now in his thirties, he continues to perform regularly with the world's leading symphony orchestras and conductors. At the same time, his restless curiosity and multifaceted musical interests have taken him in exciting new directions, forging a unique career that has earned him the rare title of classical music superstar. In addition to his concert career, Bell enjoys chamber music collaborations with artists such as Pamela Frank, Steven Isserlis and Edgar Meyer as well as occasional collaborations with artists outside the classical arena including Josh Groban, Bobby McFerrin, Chick Corea and James Taylor.
"Bell," Gramophone stated simply, "is dazzling."
Joshua Bell made his first recording at the age of 18, and he already had an extensive catalogue of classical recordings when joined the Sony Classical roster in 1996, hoping to expand his horizons as a recording artist. The result has been a distinctive and wide-ranging body of work that, to date, has yielded three Grammy Awards - for his recording of Nicholas Maw's Violin Concerto, which was written for him; for his West Side Story Suite recording; and for his performances on banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck's crossover classical recording Perpetual Motion.
Among Bell's recordings for Sony Classical are performances on two film soundtracks, the Classical Brit-nominated Ladies in Lavender and the Fall 2005 release Dreamer: Inspired By A True Story. For three years, he was deeply involved in the creation of John Corigliano's Academy Award-winning score for the 1999 film The Red Violin, performing the virtuosic solos on the soundtrack and serving as an advisor and even a stand-in in the film. In his Oscar acceptance speech, a jubilant Corigliano proclaimed, "Joshua plays like a god." Bell also gave the world premiere of Corigliano's The Red Violin/Chaconne for Violin and Orchestra, a concert work drawn from the film score, which is also included on the Sony Classical original soundtrack recording. In 2001, Bell also performed on the soundtrack of the Academy Award-winning film Iris, in an original score by James Horner.
From the classical repertoire, Bell has made critically acclaimed recordings for Sony Classical of the concertos of Beethoven and Mendelssohn (both featuring his own cadenzas), and Sibelius and Goldmark, as well as the Nicholas Maw concerto. His Grammy-nominated recording Gershwin Fantasy premiered a new work for violin and orchestra based on themes from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. Its success led to an all-Bernstein recording (also a Grammy nominee) that included the premiere of the West Side Story Suite as well as a new recording of the composer's Serenade. With the composer and double bass virtuoso Edgar Meyer, Bell appears on the Grammy-nominated crossover recording Short Trip Home and a disc of concert works by Meyer and the 19th-century composer Giovanni Bottesini. Bell also collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on the Grammy-winning spoken word children's album, Listen to the Storyteller. He has twice performed on the Grammy Awards telecast in recent years, performing music from Short Trip Home and West Side Story Suite.
In addition to Grammy Awards, Bell has won the Mercury Music Prize for the Maw concerto recording with Sir Roger Norrington and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and Germany's Echo Klassik for Sibelius/Goldmark concerto recording with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.
Bell appeared as himself in the film Music of the Heart starring Meryl Streep, and millions of people are just as likely to see him on Late Night With Conan O'Brien as on the PBS programs Great PerformancesÑJoshua Bell: West Side Story Suite from Central Park, Joshua Bell at the PenthouseÑLive From Lincoln Center, Memorial Day Concert, Sesame Street or A&E's Biography. He was one of the first classical artists to have a music video air on VH1, and he has been the subject of a BBC Omnibus documentary. Bell has been profiled in publications ranging from Newsweek to People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People issue, Gramophone and The New York Times, which stated, "No one stands in Mr. Bell's shadow."
Bell and his two sisters grew up on a farm in Bloomington, Indiana. As a child, he indulged in many passions outside of music, becoming an avid computer game player and a competitive athlete. He placed fourth in a national tennis tournament at age 10 and still keeps his racquet close by. Bell received his first violin at age four after his parents, both psychologists by profession, noticed him plucking tunes with rubber bands he had stretched around the handles of his dresser drawers. By 12 he was serious about the instrument, thanks in large part to the inspiration of renowned violinist and pedagogue Josef Gingold, who had become his beloved teacher and mentor.
In 1989, Bell received an Artist Diploma in Violin Performance from Indiana University. His alma mater also honored him with a Distinguished Alumni Service Award only two years after his graduation. He has been named an "Indiana Living Legend" and received the Indiana Governor's Arts Award.
Bell has taught master classes at London's Royal Academy of Music, and he has served as Adjunct Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, helping to develop a new generation of high tech instruments and toys. He currently serves on the Artist Committee of the Kennedy Center Honors.
Joshua Bell plays the 1713 Gibson ex Huberman Stradivarius.
Jeremy Denk
American pianist Jeremy Denk has steadily built a name as one of today's most compelling young artists, with an unusually broad repertoire.
He has appeared as soloist with many major orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the St. Louis Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra of St. Luke's, the London Philharmonic, the Dallas Symphony, and the Houston Symphony. This
-More-
season he appeared for the third time with the San Francisco Symphony, replacing an ailing
Itzhak Perlman, performing Beethoven's Concerto No. 1. He appears often in recital in New York, Washington, Boston, and Philadelphia. He will be an artist-in-residence at this year's
Gilmore Keyboard Festival, and this upcoming season he will give a recital tour pairing the Ives "Concord" Sonata and Beethoven's "Hammerklavier," culminating with a solo debut at Carnegie Hall's Zankel Hall.
At the Spoleto Festival 2004, Mr. Denk met and first performed with violinist Joshua Bell, who subsequently invited him to do a recital tour. They continue to tour as an acclaimed duo this season (2007-2008), throughout Europe and the United States. A Philadelphia reviewer noted their "equal partnership, with no upstaging." He and Mr. Bell recently recorded the Corigliano Violin Sonata for Sony Classical.
Mr. Denk maintains working relationships with a number of living composers, and has participated in many premieres: Jake Heggie's concerto "Cut Time" with the Eos Orchestra in 2001; Libby Larsen's "Collage: Boogie;" Kevin Putz's "Alternating Current," Ned Rorem's "The Unquestioned Answer." In 2002, he recorded Tobias Picker's Second Piano Concerto with the Moscow Philharmonic. He has worked closely with composer Leon Kirchner on many of his recent compositions, recording finally his Sonata No. 2 (2001). This season he performs works by György Ligeti, Elliott Carter, Morton Feldman, Thomas Adès, and Charles Ives.
Mr. Denk has always been an avid chamber musician. He has collaborated with many of the world's finest string quartets, and has appeared at both the Italian and the American Spoleto Festivals, the Santa Fe and Seattle Chamber Music Festivals, and the Verbier Festival. Jeremy Denk has spent several summers at the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Vermont and been part of "Musicians from Marlboro" national tours.
Mr. Denk maintains a widely-read blog, entitled "Think Denk." It has been praised by colleagues and the music press alike, and records some of his touring, practicing, and otherwise unrelated experiences, as well as delving into fairly detailed musical analyses and essays. Numerous arts blogs link to his, and Think Denk was cited by the music critic of the New Yorker, who called him a "superb musician who writes with arresting sensitivity and wit." Moreover: "This is a voice that, effectively, could never have been heard before the advent of the Internet: sophisticated on the one hand, informal on the other, immediate in impact. Blogs such as this put a human face on an alien culture." Numerous reviewers have noted Mr. Denk's urge for freshness and rethinking in his musical interpretations (as well as in the blog). "Mr. Denk is the ideal interpreter for music that defies easy classification," wrote a critic for the Richmond Times, and the critic of the New York Sun called his "Waldstein" Sonata a "radical take on a revolutionary work." The Washington Post referred to "brilliant playing at the edge of Schumann's sanity."
After graduating from Oberlin College and Conservatory in piano and chemistry, Mr. Denk earned a master's degree in music from Indiana University as a pupil of György Sebök, and a doctorate in piano performance from the Juilliard School, where he worked with Herbert Stessin. He lives in New York City. Denk's website and blog are at http://jeremydenk.net/
