In the summer of 2021, one of the world's most renowned chamber orchestras, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, was stuck in its hometown of London. The pandemic kept it from a series of concerts at Colorado's Bravo! Vail Festival. But the orchestra's music director, violinist Joshua Bell, had an idea.
"I threw a Hail Mary," Bell said last week from his home in New York City.
He asked the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra if it could step in on a few weeks' notice.
"That was my first chamber orchestra family when I was younger," Bell said. "I didn't think they'd be able to make it, but it worked out. And I know that Bravo! Vail was very, very pleased to have such a highly esteemed replacement."
Bell will reunite with that "family" this week when he performs four concerts with the SPCO at St. Paul's Ordway Concert Hall. In addition to soloing on Max Bruch's First Violin Concerto, he'll take the concertmaster's chair to lead the orchestra in symphonies by Mozart and Georges Bizet.
The 54-year-old Bell first soloed with the SPCO in the late '80s. But they made a deeper commitment in 2004 when the orchestra decided to move away from the conventional music director position in favor of a team of artistic partners.
The SPCO's concertmaster, Steven Copes, was among those involved in the process.
"We had to pick not only a great artist that the musicians could get excited about," Copes said, "but also one with the name recognition and audience appeal that could convince our board, staff and audience that this new path could be successful in myriad ways. Josh was such a catch for us and still is!"
