Joshua Bell & Larisa Martinez
Photography: Frances Isaac
Gioioso Insiemi
to be played with joy together
Joshua Bell and Larisa Martinez are the ‘it’ couple in the world of classical music! Joshua is 53, but has long been recognized as one of the world’s greatest classical violinists - among the ranks of Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zuckerman and Itzhak Perlman. He had a pre- covid schedule of up to 150 concerts a year; he’s played on over 40 records including 7 Billboard #1 Classical Albums, and on a half-dozen movie soundtracks; he’s played a wide array of classical, jazz and popular music with everyone from the New York Philharmonic to Sting, and he’s the Musical Director of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Orchestra. Despite his stature, he’s best known by everyone other than classical music enthusiasts for having played incognito as a busker in a Washington D.C. subway station for an article in the Washington Post in 2007. Famously, out of 1,097 passers-by, only one recognized Bell, and he received a total of only $32.17 from 27 people for the 45-minute performance. Ironically, Bell’s experiment seemed to suggest a general indifference to classical music amongst the general public, notwithstanding his excellence and fame.
Joshua grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, where his father, an ex-Episcopal Priest, was a psychotherapist and Professor at Indiana University, and his mother was a counseling psychologist and, as Joshua describes it, a pretty good amateur pianist.Joshua’s musical genius was discovered early on, as he was stringing up rubber bands around the house for scientific and musical experimentation. He started playing violin at age 4, was a soloist with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra by the time he was 14, and left Indiana to start a life on tour at age 18. Joshua calls the luckiest break of his life that, in Bloomington, he started at age 12 studying at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music with his life-long mentor, the master Josef Gingold.
At 34, Larisa, a soprano, is among a new generation of opera stars. In 2016, she won the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Audition in Puerto Rico, as well as the Angel Ramos Foundation Award and the Audience Prize. That same year, she was part of President Obama’s artistic delegation to Cuba, culminating in the PBS special Live from Lincoln Center: Seasons of Cuba, in which she was showcased. She’s performed as Corrina in Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims, as Violetta in La Traviata with the Wichita Grand Opera, and as Maria in West Side Story at Festival Napa Valley, to name a few, and in 2019, she made Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall debuts. For the last three years, Larisa has toured with tenor Andrea Bocelli, debuting at Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl and throughout North America, South America, and Europe.
Larisa grew up in Puerto Rico in what she describes as a very happy childhood. She was first exposed to classical music singing in the Puerto Rico National Choir. She studied Vocal Performance at the. Music Conservatory in San Juan, and simultaneously received her Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences, with high honors, from the University of Puerto Rico. Moving from Puerto Rico to Manhattan, Larisa then earned a Masters degree from the Mannes New School of Music. She is a proud artistic resident of Turnaround Arts, led by the Presidential Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, an organization that strives to transform schools in need through the arts.
B&NC MAG: Joshua, you’re the Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle of your profession, and yet you can walk around on the street or go into a restaurant and almost no one knows who you are. Heck, you’re famous for having proven most people don’t know who you are even if you’re playing violin right in front of them. What does that say about us, and how does it affect you?
JOSHUA: Well, one has to disassociate fame from talent or importance. McDonalds is more famous than the French Laundry. Kim Kardashian is more famous than the genius physicist, Brian Greene, who just might be the smartest man on earth. Try few people in the classical music world ever get much fame. I have been fortunate enough to get to play, on occasion, in front of huge crowds, and have been in all kinds of televised and broadcast appearances, including Sesame Street and Johnny Carson. It’s enjoyable, but it’s enough. I wouldn’t want to be so famous that you’re always public. We have some good friends who are really famous, and for sure I don’t envy their exposure.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d like to turn millions of people on to classical music. I believe there’s a huge untapped market. It’s particularly important to reach young kids. Give them the chance to hear great music with ‘fresh’ ears. Leonard Bernstein’s concerts for young people are a great example of how we can grow interest.
LARISA: That’s just one of the things I love about him. He’s such a gentleman. We met at the Blue Note in Greenwich Village in 2009 at a Chris Botti concert - he’s a mutual friend of ours. I thought Josh was really cute, but have to admit that, at first, as a music student and devotee, I was mostly excited to meet the great Joshua Bell. I had to approach him, and he was shy in responding. When we talked, he was genuine and interested in me.
JOSHUA: Well I guess whatever fame I do have - at least in the music world - paid off for me! For sure, I never would have had the nerve to have approached Larisa when we met!
Believe me, I was immediately, and genuinely, interested! I just didn’t think I had a chance… Well then, fame aside, are you the Babe Ruth, or the Mickey Mantle, of classical violin? Are you the G.O.A.T.?
JOSHUA: It’s just not like that in music. Or any art. There is no rank. You know just how many homers Babe Ruth had. But in music it’s not tangible. Selling albums is certainly not a good measure. Even within each musical discipline, classical, jazz, whatever, it’s purely a matter of taste, and it’s different for each listener. It’s one of the reasons I never participate in those ‘Desert Island Album’ shows. There’s no way to pick one performer, or one performance, and say it’s the best.
B&NC MAG: Darn it, your ‘desert island albums’ was going to be one of my questions. How about what kind of music you listen to?
JOSHUA: We listen to a lot of classical music, and a lot of jazz and some popular stuff, but probably most of the time when we’re listening to music around the house, it’s when we’re working on arranging or performing one piece or another. Larisa is the hardest working musician I’ve ever met and she listens tirelessly to everything that may inform her next performance. And, during covid, she’s started researching Latin art songs and even wrote a couple, so we’ve been listening to a ton of Spanish rhythms lately.
I guess I’d pick Beethoven if there was only one composer, and the Beatles if there was only one band. I love jazz classics and we listen to a lot of Ella Fitzgerald. I listened to a lot of Genesis and Peter Gabriel as a teenager, and I like bluegrass, and Chick Corea. There’s good music in every genre...and, as a corollary, I’m sure there was a lot of junk during Mozart’s time, that just didn’t stand the test of time.
But to be honest, if I’m not actively listening to something, I like quiet. I’ve got enough music going on in my head all the time. My mind is actively engaged when I’m listening to music. Music isn’t meant to be in the background like wallpaper. That’s really a big part of the beauty of classical music - it involves the listener. It requires an active mind, like watching a play.
B&NC MAG: So you two were still musically productive during the pandemic, despite all your performances being cancelled?
LARISA: The pandemic has involved widespread death, sickness, suffering and economic hardship, and so it’s almost uncomfortable to talk about how we’ve fared. But for us, the sabbatical had a lot of silver linings. We were married here, only 4 months before staying home for the pandemic, so the year at home was like our honeymoon. Both of us had pretty full schedules before the pandemic. I’m always going here or there for weeks or months at a time as opera requires, and Josh has been touring non-stop his entire life. I got to spend lots of quality time with all the boys - Josh and the kids - and Josh has been ecstatic to have so much more time with them to experience the day-to-day and to explore all the wonders around this house. We’ve maintained a good- sized vegetable garden, and we built the chicken coop and have been enjoying finding eggs every morning.
The break was a good thing for me professionally as well. It gave me some time and space to find my own voice. In opera, you are always playing a role. During covid, I felt like I had the time to start redefining a role of my own. I love working with new music, and like Josh said, I’ve started recording my debut album of Latin American classical songs. And we took Arthur Murray salsa lessons to get ready for our wedding...so we also did a lot of dancing in our livingroom during the pandemic!
JOSHUA: It was the luckiest thing to get this house just before covid. This area is so full of wonder, with so much to do, and being surrounded by nature has been great for us and for the boys. But I have to say that I took a bit more of a vacation during covid than Larisa. She’s a busy bee. She’s interested and interesting. I love her curiosity. She finds something of interest and she goes crazy learning everything about it. She’s that way about music, and even the chickens. She hasn’t mentioned it, but she taught herself to play the guitar during covid as well.
LARISA: He makes me sound like a workaholic, but opera isn’t something you just roll out of bed and do. You can be born with a voice, but you have to work at it. And I enjoy learning all the languages and cultures involved in the work I’m performing.
JOSHUA: My regular concert schedule is very demanding, mentally and physically, and it felt pretty good to work on relaxing and getting healthy. I’m a good tennis player and I’ve always liked basketball - although it’s not the greatest idea for me, given the risk to my hands. But during covid, I shot baskets in a kind of meditative regimen, headphones on with a book-on-tape, coffee at the ready, for at least an hour, almost every morning. We took daily walks around the neighborhood. Of course, I worked. I was able to play on zoom with other musicians and even some doctors and healthcare workers! Although it’s not the same as live appearance, I’ve been able to progress despite the quarantine. I can always study, learn and practice. I’be delved into some new music and prepared some programs and arrangements to perform as things get back to normal. And Larisa and I have worked on the “Voice and the Violin” programs we will be going back to performing together.
B&NC MAG: You’re each musical geniuses - what does that mean? Is the music springing out of you? Are you hearing it, seeing it, feeling it, expressing it?
LARISA: In the end it’s all about connection for me, being true to the music, libretto and to myself, while getting the message across and connecting with the audience.
And Josh is far too modest to ever answer this question about genius. If you could see him moving his fingers in his sleep you might get the idea. And for everyone it’s magical to see and hear Joshua perform. And I’ll tell you it’s not just in music. He’s a great speaker, and a great writer, and great at chess, which he can play in his head. He’s intelligent generally. He’s even socially ‘OK’!
JOSHUA: Well I wouldn’t say it’s springing out of me. But I do hear a lot of music, and a lot in music, all the time. There’s an aspect of learning the notes of a particular piece that’s like memorizing a poem, but it’s really more about understanding the meaning of the notes in context, like becoming fluent in a language. I try to inhabit the music and to get to what the composer wanted to express. In that sense, performing classical music is a bit different than being a modern pop star. It’s more interpretive than innovative, more reverent than revolutionary. When I’m performing, I’m moving through the path and drama of the music. It takes endless practice and tireless work to play the violin, but I would say that the music itself does come naturally for me.
B&NC MAG: What’s next? What do you want to accomplish as your performances resume?
LARISA: Well, one thing we’re working on is commissioning a composer to write something for us to perform as part of our Voice and the Violin repertoire. And I’m really looking forward to getting back into the studio, and particularly collaborating with Josh.
JOSHUA: My collaborations with popular musicians are very gratifying, and I’ll keep doing more things like that, and constantly trying to grow musically. But, truly, just resuming live performances is everything. I cherish the unique opportunity to be doing The Voice and the Violin with my wife. I’m grateful for my role as Musical Director of the Academy of St. Martin In The Fields. And I’ve got lots of great plans for concerts with all kinds of interesting people.
I truly believe that one thing the pandemic has reminded all of us is how much we value the arts, live music and nature in our lives. I am excited that we are getting back to doing what we love to do.
