Bell picks up Avery Fisher award prize

NEW YORK – When Joshua Bell was a teenager in Indiana, he got a call from Avery Fisher himself telling him he had won an Avery Fisher Career Grant, which helps selected young American classical musicians embark on a career.\n“My mother, one afternoon, said there’s a phone call for you. It’s Avery Fisher on the phone,” the 39-year-old violinist recalled Tuesday night. “I never heard him by his first and middle name – Avery Fisher. I always heard the `Hall.’”\nTwenty-one years later, Bell received another award from the family of the late classical music patron and namesake for Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall.\nAt a ceremony at the arts complex, he was presented with the $75,000 Avery Fisher Prize, which is given to accomplished American musicians. Previous recipients include cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinists Midori and Sarah Chang.\n“One of Joshua’s great gifts is that although he may be performing in a huge auditorium packed with hundreds or even thousands of people, each member of that audience feels as if they were the only person in the room,” actress Glenn Close said in presenting the award. “It’s a complex, thrilling deeply personal communication that can leave us permanently rearranged.”\nIn accepting the prize, Bell recalled his family’s musical connections, including his mother and aunt, Shirley and Esther, playing four-hand piano, and his Uncle Yitz playing clarinet.\n“Sorry, this is my bar mitzvah. I never had a bar mitzvah,” Bell said.\nAlso at the ceremony, $25,000 Avery Fisher Career grants were given to the Borromeo String Quartet, violinist Yura Lee and bassist DaXun Zhang.