Joshua Bell is one of the most recognized classical musicians in America today. And yet, there is that 2007 performance at a Washington, D.C. Metro stop, where Bell—in jeans and baseball cap—went unrecognized by passersby. The incident spurred The Man with the Violin, a 2013 children’s book by Kathy Stinson with illustrations by Dušan Petričić. This February, the book took musical form during Bell’s weeklong residency at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where the violinist performed the world premiere of Anne Dudley’s The Man with the Violin: Suite for Violin and Orchestra in a family concert with the National Symphony Orchestra. (The piece is a co-commission with Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra, which will perform it in December, led by Alexander Shelley.) Bell’s Kennedy Center residency included conducting the NSO in Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, participating in a food-and-music event with the Gourmet Symphony, and performing with Yo-Yo Ma at Bunker Hill Elementary School.
