Joshua Bell At Home with Friends CD review

Thanks to The One2One Network for giving me the CD of Joshua Bell to review! This guy rocks the violin! Here is part of his Bio from Facebook where you can also fan him:

Grammy Award-winning violinist Joshua Bell, who has enchanted audiences for two decades with his breathtaking playing and tone of rare opulence, has recorded Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos The Four Seasons. Widely considered as one of the premiere violinists of his generation, Bell is joined on this studio release by the celebrated musicians of the Academy of St.Martin in the Fields, who toured the work with him prior to the recording sessions.......
As an exclusive Sony Classical artist, Joshua Bell has released a series of albums to critical and popular acclaim, including The Red Violin Concerto, Voice of the Violin, West Side Story Suite, Nicholas Maw’s Concerto for Violin, and Romance of the Violin, which remained on the Billboard charts for two years and was named Billboard’s 2004 “Classical Album of the Year.” Recent honors include the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize and his appointment to the Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music faculty as a senior lecturer.

He just released At Home with Friends which made me feel like he was in my home playing just for me. I was mesmerized by this CD. At first, I was listening to it while driving the car. I had to turn it off because I was so relaxed and that is not a good thing when you are driving!


Here are the songs on the Album: (make note at all the familiar Artist like Sting, Josh Groban, Kristin Chenoweth, Dave Grusin, etc)

I Loves You Porgy featuring Chris Botti, trumpet
Come Again featuring Sting, vocals
Oblivion featuring Carel Kraayenhof, bandoneon
Cinema Paradiso featuring Josh Groban, vocals
Para Tí featuring Tiempo Libre, various
My Funny Valentine featuring Kristin Chenoweth, vocals
Maybe So featuring Edgar Meyer Sam Bush and Mike Marshall, strings
Grieg: Sonata No. 3 featuring Sergei Rachmaninoff (Zenph re-performance)
Eleanor Rigby featuring Frankie Moreno, piano & vocals
O, Cease Thy Maiden Fair featuring Nathan Gunn, baritone
Il Postino featuring Carel Kraayenhof, bandoneon
Left Hand Song featuring Regina Spektor, piano & vocals
Chovendo Na Roseira featuring Dave Grusin, piano
Look Away featuring Edgar Meyer, bass and Chris Thile, mandolin
Variant Moods: Duet for Sitar & Violin featuring Anoushka Shankar, sitar
I'll Take Manhattan featuring Marvin Hamlisch, piano

I loved Chovendo Na Roseira and Come Again. Really though, I loved all of them and will continue to listen to them over and over! A fun song is Para Tí! I love it for its Latin feel! This album really has a variety of songs and styles. He chose a lot of talented artist to perform with him!

You can follow Joshua Bell on his website and Fan him on Facebook!

Here is one of his latest performances: