When he was 18, violin virtuoso Joshua Bell recorded his first concertos: Bruch and Mendelssohn. The orchestra was the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the conductorless ensemble then led by its founder, the estimable Sir Neville Marriner.

That was 25 years ago, and Bell is now 43, with nearly that number of recordings in his catalog. But formative experiences have staying power. When Bell returns Sunday to Hill Auditorium, to play the Beethoven Violin Concerto, it’s not merely as soloist with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (hereafter to be called the ASMF), but as its music director, a post no one since Sir Neville has held.

The program, at which Bell and the ASMF receive the University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award, also includes the Beethoven “Coriolan Overture” and the Beethoven Symphony No. 7 in A Major. The concert is sold out.

The Ford Honors Gala, a celebratory evening of dinner and dancing, follows the concert. The gala proceeds provide critical support for UMS education and community engagement programs.

Bell and the ASMF have worked together steadily since that concerto encounter 25 years ago. But their first foray into the public eye with Bell at the helm came in late March in London, at Cadogan Hall.

“It was fabulous, absolutely fabulous,” said Harvey de Souza, the orchestra’s longtime principal violin, as as such the “leader” from his primus-inter-pares violin chair. “There was a real buzz to the event. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3, which is highly unusual for us. It was very exciting.”

De Souza, who spoke by phone from New York—the start of the Bell/ASMF U.S. tour—has led the orchestra on numerous tours with Sir Neville and soloists like Bell and violinist Julia Fischer. He loves working with Bell, whom he sees as a great fit for the orchestra’s cooperative ethos.

“Josh strikes the most perfect balance,” de Souza said. “He knows what he wants exactly, but he encourages everybody, so everybody pulls in the same direction. He has an extraordinary capacity to communicate from the first chair to the fourth horn or the timpani. Sitting next to him, I get to experience it right in my face. It’s such a joy.”

The joy is mutual.

“I’ve guest toured with them, but this is my first tour with the orchestra as a music director,” Bell said by phone from New York a few busy days before the Lincoln Center kickoff to the ASMF’s 15-city U.S. tour. It’s something I’m most excited about, this collaboration. I’m so excited how they’re sounding.”

His connection to the ASMF as his orchestra is palpable.

“It’s pretty neat,” he said. “I was excited about them asking me to be director, and now our first concert after the appointment is like getting married, and on the honeymoon you realize your wife is more beautiful than you thought before. I didn’t remember them sounding so good; they’re more beautiful than ever before.”

The orchestra is excited about the tour, he added, and about the Beethoven symphony recordings they’ll undertake afterward. “We’ll see if the honeymoon lasts,” he joked.

Bell and de Souza—his left-hand man when Bell occupies the “leader’s chair in the violin section—agree that communicating from the first chair is very different than communicating from the podium.

“Partly you are encouraging people to really be participants. That’s the hard thing,” de Souza said. ”Inevitably, although conductors don’t wish this to be the case, sometimes when there is a conductor, people follow rather than participate.”

The ASMF, by contrast, “requires everybody to be leaders,” de Souza continued. “That’s the fun part of it. It’s rather like enlarged chamber music, and it’s a different experience altogether.”

That was one of the attractions of the music director post for Bell, who after all, continues to have a flourishing soloist and chamber music career.

“We had fun in London, a lot of fun,” Bell said. “There’s something about this way of music making without a conductor and leading from the first chair instead of waving a baton. The musicians are more engaged. All of us are leading in a different way. It’s like a big piece of chamber music, and the results of that are particularly exciting. You can feel the visceral excitement when we do it this way. “What I like about this orchestra, which I’ve worked with for 25 years as a soloist, is that you never have the feeling that they are doing a job.”

That happens, Bell said, in many orchestras, famous ones (to remain unnamed) included. “It’s a job, and they’ve lost the love of music,” he said. “With this orchestra, there is always a sense of joy and fun.”