. good evening from los angeles. i'm tavis smiley. tonight a conversation with violinist nicola benedetti about her north american tour with the orchestra. working with winston mar sally's and her deep passion for arts for children. a performance from nicola benedetti coming up right now.

hands by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ ♪ ♪ nicola benedetti is one of the most sought after violinists of her generation. her ability to captivate audiences with her innate playing maid makes her one of the most classical artist of the day. she wraps up her north american tour. nicola, i'm honored to finally have you on the show. >> thank you. it is an honor to meet pup. >> you. >> an honor to meet you. and thank you to wit, wherever you are for finally getting her on the set. i wanted to talk to you for so long.

the last time i saw you, you didn't see me, because you were on stage and i'm in the audience but last time was last summer you were performing the violin could concerto he wrote for you. wyn told me when he first gave it to you, you told him it wasn't difficult enough. complex enough. is that true? >> absolutely true. to be totally truthful it was just the first draft for the movement for which there are four. but he says it shocked him because he is used to being told that his music is too complicated and too difficult and please make this more simple. but i'm used to playing violin concertos written specifically for many hours of practice to be put into that. and that from a comfort zone is what i've always done. if i look at a new piece of music, i expect to spend a month playing for six hours a day just to get to know the notes and

remind develop your relationship to it and the interpretation. so for me i wanted music that was going to source that time connecting myself to the notes and to the experience. so but i sure got what i asked for in the end. it's not any concerto. >> what a classical violinist even asked someone like wynton to even write a piece tr them, what a from him? >> i've known his music since i was a teenager and have many, many of his recordings. i know all of the pieces he has written for larger scale groups. either for his big band or things like blood on the field to kind of, but also things like all rise and swing symphony where he combined the lincoln center orchestra with a classical symphony orchestra. so i had a lot of context but i

had no idea how that would manifest it is self in a violent concerto. but wynton said it is, writing a piece is always personal. he wants it to be something the person will want and want it play again and again. so he was very patient and detailed in asking me what kind of form would you like this piece to take. what do you feel you want to say through a new commission and new collaboration? as classical musicians, we're 95% of the time playing musi mu that is written by someone we cannot communicate with other than through letters, music, written materials. there is a document we look at tp so to have that unique experience, to just have a dialogue with somebody that is creating the music, it was an experience i will, it just is like the me before the writing of that piece and the me after

it. it changed me. >> you said something i had never thought about before, so much of what classical artists play is something written generations ago and to your point they have been long since deceased. what is the value of having a conversation with the person who wrote the stuff that you're playing? >> i think it cancelled so much of the guess work and in some ways what it did for me, not just with the experience of playing wynton's concerto but what it changed m me the experience of all of the music that i play, is i could sort of, i stopped looking at composers like not human beings any more. i started looking at them more like people, like composer have

just, they have whims and they also feed off a lot of your instrumental ability. how you interpret something. how you feel you would like to play something and a lot of flexibility and i think a lot of the time we are looking at composers and sources obsessing over the tiniest little detail. beethoven for example, you actually look at his writing. look at his scores, he was changing his mind constantly. the mess that we interface with, when you look at that, just somebody that was and also somebody that was improvising constantly. this is another thing i was actually meeting one of the latest biographies written of beethoven around that time and it got me thinking a lot about the art of improvisation and that is something that largely has disappeared from the classical music. especially all of the instrumentalists. >> not just disappear, almost harassy if you do that.

they come after you if you do that. >> the disciplines have been separated out so massively, and you look back to the life of beethoven and, i mean, he wasn't even interested in teaching his students pieces that he had written. he was more interested in improvising with them. he would spend hours and lessons just saying, you know, no, try something else. try something new. try something different. a level of acceptance of course, what is a discipline you have to start doing from a young age and i didn't. i was learning, my head buried in the repertoire of beethoven and that has its own worth and beauty and discipline. but it got me thinking a lot about what the ability to improvise should do to your interpretation. should do to the way that you play in a way that is free. free to choose where you want to

go when you want to go there. this very precious preconception of exactly what you want to do before you walk on the stage. >> i asked him because i wonder how much differently we would hear from we hear when we go to concert halls if the person, persons playing it, had had a chance to talk to beethoven or bach checovski. >> ougat the moment i'm on tour with an orchestra and they specialize in a repertoire but that's one of the things they have captured and brought it life again is this sense of here and now and let's just try this.

let's try that. they are so free as musicians. i think a lot of our environment although i'm never one of those musicians to complain about the beauty of the sigh leps and the focus and the concentration that is within a classical music concert hall, i think it is one of the most precious things to experience. on both sides. but in saying that, there is an element of tension and a lack of just normal human interaction. that i think is sometimes we suffer a little bit from that. >> i heard you want a radon a r program one day talking about overpracticing and how you don't want to do too much practicing. explain to me what you meant by being weary of overpracticing. >> i think the best way to bring

an analogy so that is what is happening to us a lot with such an influx of information. we lose something of our connection with instinct of overload of information and i think our intelligence is in our instinct and that very same thing can happen through the process of practicing. you build layer upon layer upon layer of information of study of options how can you interpret something trying so hard to perfect and bring it to the highest level possible. but there's a part of you just like the way you communicate with someone and form a sentence. you can feel that person. you are deciding to speak in a certain way or smile a certain way or not. there is a an interaction there. and i think that with too much practice, too much information,

too much of an overload of analysis, you actually start to kind of block a lot of your understanding of what you're feeling about this. >> yeah. >> so i tend it like if i'm learning a piece of the first time i tend to peak with the number of hours of practice near the beginning of learning the piece. and as it gets closer to the performance i will try to just lessen that time. and just try to keep a kind of distance, almost like i'm sort of hovering above the whole experience and piece of music and above my physical sensation with the instrument and just try to get as much of a connection to the overview. what the whole story i'm trying to tell. rather than getting small-minded. >> use the word, i hope you will forgive me for asking this, and i will ask you anyway, you used the word physical a moment ago. it is hard to sit and look at you in person, much less on

stage, and not at least wonder how it is you have gone about, resisting, we use that word a lot these days in the trump era, resist, but how have you, nicola, gone aboutry sifti with phrase sex you up. with the arena you're in. how do you balance that and resist that, you tell me. >> i think that when you're genuinely head over heels in love with music itself, it's really not complicated. it is just -- there is only so much energy you can put into any thing in your life. and my happiness, sadness, well-being, everything is tied almost to an unhealthy degree to how i'm playing and how strongly i feel i'm communicating through

my playing and it's so inex trickable, so entirely a priority for me, that everything -- when i was maybe 17, 18, 19, i guess i probably did the most number of sort of things unrelated music. photo shoots and the like. i probably did the most of that before the age of 20. and my love for playing and my love for music and my understanding of it has just grown exponentially. and i have therefore done away with more and more things that distract me from that. >> yeah. >> sex sells, sells everything. everything. fills concert halls. stadiums. it sells everything. >> so does music with a beat.

and so does -- there's a lot of things i could be trying to do to become as popular as possible and it is just not my interest. i want the music i play and performances that i believe are worthy, i want as many people to experience them as possible. so i will always do anything that exposes that. but when it comes to that line where the thing i'm exposing is not that thing any more. it is having to change anything else and then you just draw a line and say i'm not willing to do that. >> have you felt, i had to struggle differently? we always have to struggle but do you feel, i had to struggle differently? or did that come smooth for you? >> i had a lot of ups and downs. when ways 16 i won a competition in the uk and signed with universal to record my first few cds and it was a lot of attention. very quickly.

and a lot i wasn't ready for. and i just threw myself into it. i was playing a hundred concerts a year at that age. so i learned the hard way. in well, many ways to look at it. on the one hand i was unbelievably fortunate to have all of the opportunities. on the other hand, i was really kind of thrown out to the lions. like a lot of harsh critics. a lot of, a lot of written about me many, many times in the first few years. like the tal septembent is ther shell crash and burn soon. it was too much too soon. a case of me again sort of deepening my connection to the things of quality and the things that i -- i felt strongly about that had no relation to anything exterior. so i was fossed to ask myself those questions young.

and deepen those relationships to music, to the people that i felt were guiding me in the best ways, to the experiences i felt were most worthwhile. >> i should mention, the audience in case you tuned in late, you are the audience, talking to you, you are going to hear from nicola and a a piece of it in just a bit here. before that, tell me about the tour. you're wrapping up this 13-city tour. every tour is different. tell me about this one. >> in terms of warmth and enjoyment and soul fullness and feeling on a tour, i don't think i've had one like it before in my life ever. >> why? >> these musicians, i have andrea, their music director, i have him to thank for introducing me to this group.

he did the first couple of concerts and he today had to go it europe. but they are just -- they are just the kindest sweetest most genuine musicians i think i've had the pleasure of touring with. i cannot begin to say enough nice things about them. so and every venue, you have a lot of nice venues in this country. i've been playing here since ways 16. i thought i had experienced many of them. most of these i never played in before and every single one is just full halls, amazing audiences. great acoustics. beautiful auditoriums. it has just been a dream. >> how did you find disney hall this time around? and i ask that because in that very chair days ago was the great architect frank gary. >> yes. i watched your interview. >> a great conversation. >> yes. >> i want to ask you about your work. we talked about his work and we come to you and your work in a

second. what do you make of, so i can brag about l.a., what did you make of disney hall? >> we came off together after our first piece and we literally said to each other, can we stay here and do this again tomorrow and the next time and the next time. and to have an acoustic that is so precise, clean, perfect, but have the warmth with it. it is like what you want from a recording. you want the intimacy of the sound but you also want the ambiance of the sound. it captures both things at once. and equally with the architecture you have the grandeur and something you walk into and it takes your breath a away. but people are comfortable there. they feel at home. they feel like they are relaxed. like they can be themselves. it is so, so difficult to combine those things that seem like opposites. >> it is a beautiful space. as i mentioned, we talked to frank about his work and we talk

about arts education but you spend a lot of time, a lot of time, working with young people. why so? >> i've done it since wai was 1. never thought twice about it. >> and parents say to you, my kids don't like that kind of music. you say, you don't like broccoli either. tell us about the broccoli. >> i don't know where i came up with that one. >> but it works, though. >> it stuck. anyway, no, i think there are all kind -- it is such a complex subject. and no matter what perspective you show, there is of course a counter argument. but i would say that the few things that i'm quite clear about in my mind, one of them is that when speaking of education, there's no other subject within education where we ask the consensus of the children to tell us what to teach them. why is that the case with music? why do we let them dictate to us what music they should hear or

should at least be exposed to? the other thing is, that's not necessarily focussing on children falling in love with crass cal musi classical music. it is that i believe the creeing aof symphonic music, the creation of the orchestra, a certain number of things that fall within what we call the genre of classical music that i think are amazing human creations that they should be exposed to. then further to that, there is the kind of colorfulness and excitement and visceral experience that i witnessed children having from listening to classical muse okay i not a weekly basis that i just think should be normal. should just be, this is what happens. and that is not so far away from what reality is.xdñiw3myñixd >> well there is one way to fix that and that is for you and

others to do what you are doing. you and frank and so many others doing so much with these kids. >> thank you. >> now i have to shut up and make room for the performance. so stand by, as nicola closes tonight's show with the orchestra and performance in b flat major. here it comes. nicola good to have you on the program. thanks for watching. stand by. here she comes. until tomorrow night, keep the faith. ♪ ♪

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♪ ♪ ♪ [ applause ] for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis smiley, join us next time and take a deep dive into what is happening around the country. that's next time, we'll see you then.

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