violinist. good evening, from los angeles, i'm tavis smiley, tonight, a conversation with a violinist, working with wynton marsalis, and her deep commitment to music. a conversation with nicoletta benedetti coming up right now.

♪ and by contributions to the pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ ♪ ♪ nicola benedetti is one of the most sought-after virgolinis of her generation, she wraps up her north american tour, nicola, i'm honored to have you here. >> thank you so much, it's an honor to meet you. >> thank you, it's an honor to have you here, finally, i thank my friend, wynton marsalis, for getting you here.

as a matter of fact, the last time yi say you, you didn't see me, i was in the audience. you were performing, a great performance. >> thank you. >> i read somewhere, wynton may have told me when he first gave it to you, you told it that it was not complex enough, is that true? >> it's absolutely true. >> okay. >> i mean, to be totally truthful. it was just the first draft of the first movement of which there are four. but it -- 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 that are written especially for many hours of practice to be put into that. and that is where my comfort zone is, it's what i have always done, if i look at a new piece of music i expect to play for a month, six hours a day just to

get to know the notes, never mind your development to it and the interpretation, so for me, i wanted the music that would force that kind of connection to the notes and experience. but i sure got what i asked for in the end. it's not an easy concerto. >> when a classical violinist even asks somebody like wynton to write a piece for them what are you looking for from him? >> i have known his music since i was a teenager and have many, many of his recordings. i know all of the pieces that he has written for larger scale groups, either for his big band, or -- also things like all-rise, and swing system fmphony. i had a lot of context, but i

had no idea how that was going to manifest itself in the violin concerto, but wynton says it's always an experience for hit writing a piece. it is always very personal. he wants it to be something the person is going to like and want to 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, a new collaboration. as classical musicians, 95% of the time we're playing music written by somebody we cannot communicate with other than through letters, music, written materials, something that is a document we look at. so to have that unique experience to just have a dialogue with somebody that is creating the music of cour, i m was the experience, the me before the writing of that piece

and the me after it. it changed me. >> you said something now that i never thought about before, since so much of what classical artists play is written generations ago, these have long been since deceased. what is the value of because able to have a conversation with the person who wrote the stuff that you're playing. >> i think it -- cancels so much of the guesswork, and in some ways, what it did for me, not just within the experience of playing wynton's concerto, but what it changed with me, the experience of playing all the music that i play is -- i could sort of -- i thought looking at composers like not human beings any more. you know, i started looking at them more like people -- composers have just

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 sort of obsessing over the tiniest little detail, i mean, beethoven for example, you actually look at his writing and his scores he was changing his mind constantly. the mess that we actually interface with. it was somebody you look at and somebody who was improvising on constantly. i read a biography on beethoven, it got me thinking of the art of improvising, and that is an art that largely disappeared from the classical music. most of us don't improvise.

>> it's almost heresy if you do that. the peers come after you. >> the discipline has been set out so massively. you look at the life of beethoven. he was not even interested in teaching his students pieces that he had written. he was more interested in improvising with them. he would spend hours in lessons, just saying try something new and different. i mean, there is a level of acceptance, of course that is a discipline you have to start doing from a young age and i did not. i was learning, you know, my head buried in the repertoire. 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 -- is free, free to choose where you want to go when you want to go, when you want to go

there rather than this very kind of precious pre conception 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 what we hear, when we go to concert halls if the persons playing it had had a chance to talk to beethoven or bach or tchaikovsky. i wonder of it would be different, what they hear if they could talk to the composer. >> i think a level of naturalist, a level of risk-taking. a level of let's -- at the moment i'm on tour with the orchestra, and they specialize in this, they brought together this sense of here and now,

let's just try that. they are so free as musicians. i think a lot of our environment, although i am never one of those musicians to complain about the beauty of the silence and the focus and the concentration that is within a classical music concert hall. i think it's 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 on a radio program one day talking about over-practicing. and how you don't want to do -- you don't want to do too much practicing. explain to me about what you meant by being weary of

over-practicing. >> i think the best way to bring an analogy to that is sometimes what is happening with the flux of information. we lose something of our connection to instinct with an overload of information. i think our highest form of 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 you can interpret something, trying so hard to perfect and bring it to the highest level possible. but there is a part of you just like the way you communicate with someone, the way you form a sentence. you can feel that person, you decide to speak in a certain way or smile in a certain way or not. there is an interaction there. i think with too much practice

and information, too much of an overload of analysis, you actually kind of start to block a lot of your understanding of what you're feeling about this. so i tend to -- if i'm learning a piece for 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'll try to just lessen that kind. and just try to keep a kind of distance, almost like i'm sort of hovering over the sort of experience and the music. and above my physical sensation with the instrument and just trying to get as much of a connection to the over-view. what the whole story i'm trying to tell. rather than getting small minded. >> yeah. use the word -- i hope you will forgive me for asking this i'm going to ask anyway. you used the word physical in a moment and it's hard to sit and look at you as a person much

less on stage and not at least wonder how it is how you have gone about resisting these days, we use it a lot in the trump era, resist, but how do you go about resisting the temptation to sort of pardon the phrase, sex you up, given the field you're in. the way you look, the arena you're in, how do you balance that and resist it? you tell me. >> i think when you're genuinely head over heels in love with music itself, it's really not complicated. you release so much energy you can put into anything in your life. my happy, everything, 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 -- 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 to 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, though, it sells everything. it sells tickets to everything. fills concert halls and stadiums. it sells everything. >> but so does music with a beat.

and so does -- i mean, there is a lot of things i could be trying to do to become as popular as possible. and it's just not my interests. i want -- the music i play and the 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, having to change into something else then you just draw a line. and say i'm not willing to do that. >> have you ever felt that you have had to struggle differently? we all struggle. but have you ever thought you would struggle differently to be taken seriously? but does that come rather smoothly for you. when i was 16 i had won a competition in the uk and signed with universal to record my first few cds. it was a lot of attention very

quickly and a lot i was not ready for and i juthrew myself into it. i was place a lot of concerts at that age. and i learned the hard way, well, there are many ways to look at that. on the one hand, i was very, very fortunate to have those opportunities, on the other hand i was really kind of thrown out to the lions. you know, a lot of harsh critics and a lot written about me many, many times in the first few years. the talent is there but she is going to crash and burn soon because it was just too much too soon. so it was 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 interior. so i was forced to ask myself those questions young.

and deep in those relationships, to music, to people i felt were guiding me in the best ways. the experience i felt were the most worthwhile. >> i should mention the audience in case you tuned in late, the augustin y audience you are going to hear -- you are going to hear from nicola, and just a piece of the music in just a second. stand by for that. tell me about this tour you have been on, you're just wrapping up this basically 13 city tour, every tour is different. tell me about this one. >> in terms of warmth and enjoyment and -- soulfulness and feeling on a tour, i don't think i have had one like it before in my life ever. these musicians, i have andrea marcone, the musical director, him to thank for introducing me

to this group. he did the first couple of concerts and then he had to go back to europe. but they are just -- they're just the kindest, sweetest, most genuine musicians i think i have ever had the pleasure of touring with. i cannot begin to say enough nice things about them. and every venue, you have a lot of nice venue in this country. i've been playing here since i was 16. i thought i had experienced many of them. most of these i had never played in before and every single one is just full halls, amazing audiences. great acoustics, great auditoriums. >> the brilliant architect who resigned, how did you find him -- i want to ask you about your work with kids because we talked about his work with kids.

we'll come to you with your work in a second. what do you make of this? >> we came off together after our first piece. and we literally said to each other can we just stay here and do this again tomorrow night and the next night and the next nighttim night? to have than acoustic that is so precise, clean, perfect, but to have the warmth with it. you want that from a recording, the intimacy but alsohe sound, the architect, something you walk into and it takes your breath away. but everybody is comfortable in there. people feel like they're at home. they feel like they're relaxed. like they can be themselves. it's so difficult to combine those things that seem like opposites. >> it is a beautiful space. as i mentioned, we talked to

frank, his work with kids, you can never talk about arts and education, but you spent a lot of time working with kids. >> i have done it since i was 15. never thought twice about it. >> i love the thing you say all the time when parents say to you my kids don't like that kind of music, you say they don't like broccoli either. how do you tell the story? >> i don't know where i came with that one. >> but it works though. >> it stuck. no, i think there are all kinds, it's such a complex subject and no matter what perspective you show, of course there is a counter-argument, i would think things that i'm clear about, one thing when speaking about education there is 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 -- that is not necessarily focusing on children falling in love with classical music. it's focusing on the idea that i believe the creation of symphonic, the creation of the orchestra, there are a certain amount of things that fall within the genre of classical, that human beings should be exposed to. further to that there is the kind of colorfulness and excitement. and visceral experience that i have witnessed children having from listening to classical music on a weekly basis that i just think should be normal. should just be -- this is what happens and it's -- it's so far away from what the reality is. >> well, there is only one way to fix that which is for you and others to do what you're doing.

you and frank and wynton spending so much time with these kids. thank you so much, now i have to shut up and make room for the performance tonight. stand by as nicola closes tonight with the show with the venice orchestra. here it comes. nicola, good to have you on the program. here she comes. thank you for watching. until tomorrow night keep the faith. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

[ applause ] for more information on today's show, visit tavis smiley at pbs.org. >> hi, i'm tavis mismiley, joine next time with singer clint holmes. that is next time. we'll see you then.

and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

good evening, from largest, i'm tavis smiley, this talented actor joins us to discuss his filled "the united kingdom." this story describes an african king who married a white person. we're glad you joined us. david ayellowah.