Bella Ward
Bella first picked up the violin at the age of six, and hasn’t put it down since. Her early experiences fiddling with her dad, singing in her mom’s musical theater classes, and writing songs with her siblings cultivated a joyous approach to music at a young age and led her to pursue it as a career.
In 2014, Bella was accepted into the University of North Carolina School of the Arts high school program to study violin with Kevin Lawrence. She continued at UNCSA for her undergraduate studies, serving within concertmaster and associate concertmaster roles with the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra and working with conductors such as Xian Zhang, Steven White, Mark Gibson, and Larry Rachleff. While at UNCSA, Bella served as an ArtistCorps member within the community engagement department. In this role she taught violin lessons, led orchestra sectionals, and created STEAM based lesson plans to teach in Title I schools in Winston-Salem.
Bella recently completed her Master’s degree in Violin Performance and a certificate in Music Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University in May of 2024, studying with Dr. Katherine McLin. At ASU, Bella served in principal roles in the ASU Symphony and taught private violin lessons to undergraduate students as Dr. McLin’s TA.
As a soloist and chamber musician Bella has performed in masterclasses for Soovin Kim, Nicholas DiEugenio, Philip Setzer, and Wu Han and David Finckel of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. When she is not playing classical music, Bella writes original music with her band, Water the Band, whose debut album, “Everyone’s Home” was recorded at Ovation Sound in North Carolina and released in 2020.
